Meta Brings in Goldman Sachs Veteran McCormick to Lead AI Financing Strategy
N.R. Finch
Meta president Powell McCormick is courting sovereign funds and Wall Street giants to bankroll $600 billion in U.S. AI infrastructure by 2028 — the first time Zuckerberg has admitted ad cash flow alone cannot fund his AI ambitions.
What did one dinner reveal?
In March, Powell McCormick hosted Saudi PIF chair Yasir al-Rumayyan, Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and Blackstone president Jonathan Gray at a New York dinner. The message: Meta's AI strategy needs outside capital, and the door is open.
This means → Meta is formally shifting from "fund everything internally" to "ask the world's largest pools of money for help" — something that never happened in the Zuckerberg era.
In plain terms = Facebook and Instagram ad revenue used to cover the bills. Now AI spending is outpacing what ads can generate.
How much money, and where is it coming from?
Meta plans to spend $600 billion in the U.S. alone by 2028. This year's AI capital expenditure is projected at $145 billion, rising further in 2027.
Financing tools under consideration include off-balance-sheet arrangements and structured finance — moving assets or liabilities off the company's books to reduce reported leverage — and potentially a multi-billion-dollar equity offering modeled on Google's $85 billion stock issuance.
This reflects a fundamental shift: a company that always ran on its own cash flow now needs to raise capital like a traditional infrastructure builder.
Why is Powell McCormick the one brokering this?
She served as deputy national security adviser in Trump's first term and has deep ties to the sovereign-wealth-fund world. Her husband is Republican senator David McCormick.
Blackstone president Jonathan Gray told the FT: "If Dina Powell is in the room, things get done." BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said: "We have done more with Meta in the past four months than in all prior years combined."
This means → Her core value is not financial engineering itself but a political-and-business trust network — the ability to get sovereign funds and Wall Street heavyweights to the same table.
Beyond fundraising, what strategy is she pushing?
Powell McCormick is involved in the internal debate over whether Meta should build a cloud-computing business to compete head-on with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
She co-leads the newly created "Meta Compute" initiative alongside long-time infrastructure head Santosh Janardhan and entrepreneur Daniel Gross. Zuckerberg says the program will build "hundreds of gigawatts" of AI infrastructure over the coming decades.
In plain terms = this is not just about raising money — Meta is debating whether to transform from a social-advertising company into an infrastructure company that sells compute.
What are the biggest risks?
Financial: Meta is smaller than other hyperscale cloud operators. With debt rising and free cash flow narrowing, its financial cushion is relatively thin.
Competitive: In the AI-model race, Meta is widely seen as trailing the top AI labs.
Internal: Meta's leadership has long been dominated by Zuckerberg loyalists. One insider acknowledged that Powell McCormick "has encountered some pushback — they don't always like the questions she asks." This means → whether Wall Street financing logic can truly embed itself in this tech company's decision-making remains an open question.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.