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Meta (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) heads into its July 29 earnings report with its stock falling while the underlying business continues to accelerate. Shares have declined 7.87% over the past week and 9.68% year to date to $595.19.

With Meta trading at just 18x forward earnings, the recent pullback could offer an attractive entry point ahead of Q2 earnings.

Meta Trades at 18x Earnings Despite 33% Revenue Growth Meta trades at an 18x forward P/E with an 82% gross margin, a 41.44% operating margin, and a 20.69% ROIC. Q1 revenue climbed 33.08% to $56.31 billion, ad impressions increased 19%, and average price per ad climbed 12%. Meanwhile, full-year 2025 free cash flow came in at $43.59 billion, funding $26.25 billion in buybacks alongside a $0.53 quarterly dividend.

Wall Street’s consensus price target sits at $826.01, implying 38.8% upside from the stock’s current price of $595.19. Right now, analysts assigned Meta 57 buy ratings, 6 holds, and zero sell ratings. Paying under 20x earnings for a business generating 20%-plus returns on invested capital feels attractive on a relative-value basis.

Meta Has Beaten Earnings 6 Quarters in a Row Meta has beaten EPS estimates in six consecutive quarters, with the last miss dating all the way back to Q3 of 2022. Polymarket traders assign an 87.1% probability of another beat on July 29, and the full-chain put/call ratio sits at 0.43, with the July 31 expiry at just 0.30. Institutional positioning is decisively long into the release.

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Meta Beats Alphabet on Growth Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at a more expensive 25x forward P/E (vs Meta’s 18x), but Alphabet’s most recent quarterly revenue growth was 24% versus Meta’s 33%. There’s of course more to consider when comparing the two advertising giants, but Meta stock is cheaper on an earnings basis and is delivering higher top-line growth.

Can Meta Justify Up to $145 Billion in AI Spending? The bear case is capex. Meta raised FY2026 capital spending guidance to $125 to $145 billion, sparking execution concerns. However, Meta’s Q1 operating cash flow of $32.23 billion, interest coverage ratio of 71.48x, and cash and securities of $81.2 billion give the business a cushion against the capex spend.

CFO Susan Li confirmed the company retains the flexibility to “bring it online more slowly or reduce our spending in future years” if returns lag. If Q2 results show that AI investments are strengthening ad performance without eroding margins, the recent pullback could prove to be a compelling buying opportunity.

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Analysts on Wall Street project that Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) will announce quarterly earnings of $7.13 per share in its forthcoming report, representing a decline of 0.1% year over year. Revenues are projected to reach $60.17 billion, increasing 26.6% from the same quarter last year.

Over the past 30 days, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has been adjusted upward by 0.6% to its current level. This demonstrates the covering analysts' collective reassessment of their initial projections during this period.

Before a company reveals its earnings, it is vital to take into account any changes in earnings projections. These revisions play a pivotal role in predicting the possible reactions of investors toward the stock. Multiple empirical studies have consistently shown a strong association between trends in earnings estimates and the short-term price movements of a stock.

While investors usually depend on consensus earnings and revenue estimates to assess the business performance for the quarter, delving into analysts' forecasts for certain key metrics often provides a more comprehensive understanding.

With that in mind, let's delve into the average projections of some Meta Platforms metrics that are commonly tracked and projected by analysts on Wall Street.

It is projected by analysts that the 'Revenue- Family of Apps (FoA)' will reach $59.60 billion. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +26.4%.

Analysts' assessment points toward 'Revenue- Advertising' reaching $59.01 billion. The estimate indicates a change of +26.7% from the prior-year quarter.

Analysts predict that the 'Revenue- Other' will reach $860.24 million. The estimate points to a change of +47.6% from the year-ago quarter.

The collective assessment of analysts points to an estimated 'Revenue- Reality Labs' of $441.53 million. The estimate suggests a change of +19.3% year over year.

The average prediction of analysts places 'Advertising Revenue- US & Canada' at $26.03 billion. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +29.9%.

The consensus among analysts is that 'Advertising Revenue- Europe' will reach $14.47 billion. The estimate points to a change of +27.4% from the year-ago quarter.

Analysts forecast 'Geographical Revenue by User- Asia-Pacific' to reach $11.68 billion. The estimate suggests a change of +24.8% year over year.

The consensus estimate for 'Advertising Revenue- Rest of the World' stands at $8.16 billion. The estimate indicates a change of +36% from the prior-year quarter.

Analysts expect 'Geographical Revenue by User- US & Canada' to come in at $25.57 billion. The estimate points to a change of +25.5% from the year-ago quarter.

According to the collective judgment of analysts, 'Geographical Revenue by User- Rest of World' should come in at $8.55 billion. The estimate indicates a change of +36.8% from the prior-year quarter.

The combined assessment of analysts suggests that 'Family daily active people (DAP)' will likely reach $3.61 billion. The estimate is in contrast to the year-ago figure of $3.48 billion.

Based on the collective assessment of analysts, 'Headcount' should arrive at 75,407 . Compared to the current estimate, the company reported 75,945 in the same quarter of the previous year.

View all Key Company Metrics for Meta Platforms here>>>

Over the past month, shares of Meta Platforms have returned +11.7% versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.6% change. Currently, META carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), suggesting that its performance may align with the overall market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

Freemont Management S.A. trimmed its position in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 10.1% during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 10,700 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,200 shares during the period. Freemont Management S.A.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $6,122,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. First National Bank Sioux Falls boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. First National Bank Sioux Falls now owns 2,001 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,321,000 after acquiring an additional 14 shares in the last quarter. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 1.4% in the fourth quarter. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. now owns 984 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $649,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares during the period. Vista Capital Partners Inc. increased its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 1.3% during the second quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. now owns 1,075 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $794,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares in the last quarter. Arcataur Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.9% during the fourth quarter. Arcataur Capital Management LLC now owns 1,736 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,146,000 after purchasing an additional 15 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Acorn Creek Capital LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. Acorn Creek Capital LLC now owns 2,118 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,398,000 after purchasing an additional 15 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.84, for a total value of $5,589,088.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares in the company, valued at $8,014,978.24. The trade was a 41.08% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, May 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total transaction of $1,268,023.68. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This trade represents a 65.03% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 37,948 shares of company stock worth $23,184,319 in the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of analysts have recently commented on the company. Bank of America dropped their price target on Meta Platforms from $885.00 to $820.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, April 20th. Rosenblatt Securities reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $1,015.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. BNP Paribas Exane began coverage on Meta Platforms in a research note on Tuesday, June 2nd. They set an “outperform” rating for the company. Citizens Jmp dropped their target price on Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $800.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 10th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on Meta Platforms from $767.00 to $835.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating, eight have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $835.64.

Check Out Our Latest Research Report on Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms Stock Performance META stock opened at $606.10 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.53 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.03, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.04 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 12-month low of $520.26 and a 12-month high of $796.25. The company has a current ratio of 2.35, a quick ratio of 2.35 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $604.90 and its 200 day simple moving average is $625.98.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The social networking company reported $10.44 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $6.67 by $3.77. The firm had revenue of $56.31 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $55.56 billion. Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 36.93% and a net margin of 32.84%.The company’s revenue was up 33.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $6.43 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 30.07 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.3%. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is 7.63%.

Meta Platforms News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: A Florida teen dropped a social-media addiction lawsuit against Meta before trial, reducing near-term legal pressure and removing a potential headline risk for the company. Reuters article Positive Sentiment: Wells Fargo reportedly raised its price target on Meta, reinforcing Wall Street’s bullish long-term view despite near-term volatility. Article Positive Sentiment: Jefferies said Meta’s AI glasses could become a meaningful long-term hardware growth opportunity, highlighting the company’s first-mover advantage in AI wearables. Article Positive Sentiment: Analysts and commentators continue to point to strong demand for Meta’s data-center and AI infrastructure buildout, with some seeing that spending as evidence of aggressive positioning in the AI race. Article Neutral Sentiment: Meta launched a new AI-optimism ad campaign and Zuckerberg has been publicly pushing back against “AI doomerism,” but the messaging also highlights ongoing backlash over AI risks and product criticism. Article Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s stock is in focus ahead of earnings, with some technical traders noting it is trading below several key moving averages and could remain volatile if results or guidance disappoint. Article Negative Sentiment: Meta dropped out of a major clean-energy pact while its natural-gas power buildout accelerates, which could fuel criticism from ESG-focused investors and increase scrutiny of its AI infrastructure strategy. Article Negative Sentiment: Several reports suggest investors are worried about Meta’s heavy AI capex, with comparisons to other megacap tech names showing the market is increasingly focused on whether spending will pay off. Article About Meta Platforms (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Premium Retail’s Stress Test Is Separating Winners From Losers D-Wave Quantum or a Quantum ETF: Which Is the Better Bet? GE Vernova Just Sent a Mixed AI Signal to Investors Alphabet Crushed Earnings, But One Number Spooked the Market Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).

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Meta Platforms stock is under selling pressure. Why are META shares declining? Earnings Preview & HistoryMeta is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on July 29. Analysts estimate EPS of $7.18 along with revenue of $60.22 billion. For the prior quarter, Meta Platforms reported EPS of $7.31, beating the consensus estimate of $6.67. The company also posted revenue of $56.31 billion, exceeding the consensus estimate of $55.54 billion.

Meta Platforms has beaten EPS estimates in eight consecutive quarters. Over the last four quarters, the company has averaged an EPS surprise of 0.12% and a revenue surprise of 0.03%.

What To WatchInvestors will be watching Meta’s family-of-apps user trends for early signs that Europe’s youth-access restrictions are affecting engagement, since even small usage shifts can ripple into ad inventory and pricing. Advertising revenue growth relative to pricing and impressions is another key area to track, given the $60.22 billion revenue target hinges on strong ad demand alongside Reels and AI-driven discovery.

Updates on AI monetization, including Advantage+ performance and returns on AI infrastructure spending, will also be closely followed as the market focuses on the gap between AI investment and results.

A Death Cross Still Casts a Shadow Over Meta StockMeta is trading 0.8% below its 20-day SMA ($615.93) and 0.9% below its 100-day SMA ($616.32), while holding 0.8% above its 50-day SMA ($606.09). That "tug-of-war" positioning often produces choppy trade, and it helps explain why the stock can feel heavy on down-futures mornings even if the longer trend isn’t breaking.

RSI is the cleaner momentum read right now: at 51.71, it’s basically neutral, which fits a stock that’s consolidating rather than trending hard. In plain terms, RSI helps gauge whether buying or selling has gotten stretched; near-50 readings usually mean neither side has clear control.

The bigger-picture trend is still mixed: the 20-day SMA is above the 50-day SMA (a near-term bullish tilt), but the death cross from December 2025 (50-day SMA below the 200-day SMA) keeps the longer-term trend filter cautious. Zooming out, the stock remains 4.4% below its 200-day SMA ($639.20), and that overhead area can act like "gravity" on rebounds.

From a levels standpoint, traders will likely keep an eye on nearby pivots:

Key Resistance: $643.00 — a nearby round-number zone that also sits close to the 200-day moving-average area, where rebounds can stall Key Support: $577.00 — a nearby prior demand zone that sits well above the $520.26 52-week low, but would matter if selling pressure builds Analyst Consensus & Recent ActionsThe stock carries a Buy rating with an average price forecast of $820.81. Recent analyst moves include:

Raymond James: Strong Buy (Raises Target to $850.00) (July 21) Wells Fargo: Overweight (Raises Target to $835.00) (July 21) Rothschild & Co: Buy (Raises Target to $1000.00) (July 21) Meta Shares SlipMETA Price Action: At the time of publication, Meta shares are trading 2.76% lower at $609.82, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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A day after Snap tentatively settled with the plaintiff in a social media addiction lawsuit, leaving Meta as the only remaining defendant, the case has been dropped. In a statement, Meta said the plaintiff chose to drop his case against Meta without receiving any payment.

TikTok and Google’s YouTube had previously reached settlement agreements with the plaintiff. (Snap on Tuesday confirmed a tentative agreement had been reached.)

The bellwether jury trial had been set to begin next week in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles.

The plaintiff, a Florida teenager known by the initials “R.K.C.,” had sued the social media companies for creating addictive platforms. It was one of thousands of similar lawsuits from teens, schools, and state attorneys general that had accused the big tech companies of knowingly creating addictive platforms.

The precedent that would have been set by this lawsuit and others could have impacted how the companies build their apps, known for features that keep people engaged, like the infinite scroll and their continual buzz of notifications.

The plaintiff’s decision to drop the case follows Meta’s loss in a New Mexico case earlier this year, which marked its first courtroom defeat over social media harms. Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in penalties after the company was found to have misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children.

In March, a Los Angeles jury also handed both Meta and Google another defeat, awarding the defendant in that case some $6 million in damages.

Meta had been prepared to argue that the plaintiff in this case had allegedly only used Facebook and Instagram accounts for minutes per day on average, and was planning to claim that most of his accounts had been created after hiring a lawyer.

In its statement, Meta said that, “this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.”

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Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB)’s AI-enabled glasses could represent a new growth opportunity for the company as the wearables move toward broader consumer adoption, according to Jefferies analysts who tested multiple models and highlighted the product’s potential as a future computing interface.

The analysts wrote that Meta’s AI glasses impressed across areas including camera quality, setup experience and their traditional glasses design, noting that the company currently has a first-mover advantage as the only major player shipping AI glasses at scale. Jefferies estimated that the category could create a $14 billion to $18 billion hardware revenue opportunity over the next several years, assuming adoption levels similar to the Apple Watch and an average selling price of about $400.

Meta’s AI glasses are screen-free, voice-controlled wearables that combine cameras, open-ear audio and integration with the Meta AI application. Jefferies tested three models, including the Ray-Ban Meta Gen2 priced at $379, the Oakley Meta priced at $499 and the Ray-Ban Display with Neural Band priced at $799, and wrote that the devices integrated naturally into daily activities including sports, communication and productivity.

The analysts’ base-case scenario estimates the hardware opportunity could translate into roughly 35 million to 45 million units sold, with additional potential upside from AI subscriptions, advertising and commerce-related monetization. Jefferies highlighted Meta AI’s growing user base, noting that monthly active users have reached approximately 1 billion and daily glasses users are increasing year over year.

Jefferies wrote that the longer-term opportunity could extend beyond hardware sales if AI assistants shift toward “agentic” experiences where users delegate tasks rather than simply search for information. In that scenario, the analysts noted that AI glasses could capture user intent at the point of discovery and potentially position Meta closer to future commerce transactions.

The analysts highlighted several strengths of the products, including camera performance, easy photo capture and synchronization through the Meta AI app. They also pointed to the open-ear audio experience as a key advantage, allowing users to listen to music, handle calls and receive notifications while maintaining awareness of their surroundings. Spotify integration, the glasses’ comfortable design and their ability to combine functions typically handled by a phone camera, earbuds and action camera were also cited as benefits.

However, Jefferies noted that the technology remains in development. The analysts pointed to areas for improvement including video quality, speaker volume, voice activation reliability, battery life and the adjustment required for users to incorporate the glasses into everyday routines. They also noted that launches in some regions, including Europe, have faced delays related to supply constraints and regulatory considerations around AI, privacy and always-on cameras.

Jefferies maintained a positive view on Meta’s AI glasses opportunity, writing that the company’s early position in the category could provide a long-term growth opportunity that is not yet reflected in current expectations.

Shares of Meta traded hands at $630 on Wednesday, down about 5% so far this year.

Artificial intelligence provides some great opportunities for many companies today. But it’s also a very expensive proposition that’s weighing down some of the biggest companies in the stock market. Meta Platforms (META -2.31%) is down 3% so far this year on fears that the company is taking on too much debt as it invests in AI infrastructure.

Meta’s balance sheet shows that the company has about $58.7 billion in long-term debt. But a new report indicates that the company’s debt load is much greater. Nikkei Asia reports that Meta Platforms has another $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt. That number has grown substantially since 2022, the outlet reported.

Should investors be concerned about Meta Platforms’ stock?

Image source: The Motley Fool.

What is off-balance-sheet debt?Publicly traded companies are required to report the amount of debt they are incurring. But under accounting rules, equipment such as graphics processing units and servers that are under long-term contracts but not yet delivered is treated as an off-balance-sheet item. Meta and other companies disclose future debt in annotations on their financial statements.

When Meta’s GPUs are delivered and the data centers become operational, this hidden debt will begin to appear on the quarterly balance sheet.

Meta is one of five companies -- the others being Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle -- analyzed in the Nikkei Asia report. The five companies, all of which are making significant investments in AI infrastructure, have a collective $1.65 trillion in debt that is not reflected on the companies' balance sheets.

Meta is accelerating its spending on AIMeta Platforms shows no appetite to slow its spending. The company spent $72 billion on capital expenditures in 2025 -- most of it related to AI -- and said in its first-quarter report that it would spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this year.

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Its $50 billion Hyperion data center planned for Louisiana is getting a lot of attention. The center was first announced as a $27 billion project funded by Meta’s joint venture with Blue Owl Capital. But in June, Meta announced it was expanding the project from a 2-gigawatt center to 5 gigawatts of capacity as it seeks to build out enough AI infrastructure to meet demand.

Blue Owl and its partners are funding the construction, allowing the project to remain off Meta’s balance sheet. Blue Owl will own 80% of Hyperion, with Meta owning the remaining 20%.

Should investors be concerned about Meta’s debt?On the one hand, $420 billion is a big number. There are only 30 companies in the world with an entire valuation of more than $420 billion, so when Meta takes on that much debt that hasn’t even made it to its balance sheet yet, it can seem pretty scary.

Meta is making huge, long-term commitments based on the idea that AI demand will justify the infrastructure. It appears to be transitioning its business away from the so-called metaverse toward hyperscaler services. That means investors should be prepared for lower margins, perhaps as early as when the company reports second-quarter earnings after the market closes on July 29.

Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney recently told CNBC that he doubts that Meta will attempt to compete head-to-head with Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet -- the three largest hyperscalers by market share. Instead, he sees Meta attempting to challenge neocloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius Group in offering AI-specific computing products, including AI chips and systems.

Either way, I expect Meta to shed more light on the picture when it reports earnings next week.

Posted by Defense World Staff on Jul 22nd, 2026

Aware Super Pty Ltd as trustee of Aware Super purchased a new position in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) during the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor purchased 280,727 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $160,612,000. Meta Platforms comprises about 2.4% of Aware Super Pty Ltd as trustee of Aware Super’s holdings, making the stock its 7th largest holding.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. RHL Group LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth $29,000. Bayban lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 100.0% in the first quarter. Bayban now owns 70 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $40,000 after purchasing an additional 35 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Safe Harbor Fiduciary LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter valued at about $42,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Trading Down 0.3% NASDAQ META opened at $643.81 on Wednesday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $796.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24, a quick ratio of 2.35 and a current ratio of 2.35. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $604.93 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $626.52. The stock has a market cap of $1.63 trillion, a P/E ratio of 23.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.14 and a beta of 1.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, April 29th. The social networking company reported $10.44 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $6.67 by $3.77. The firm had revenue of $56.31 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $55.56 billion. Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 36.93% and a net margin of 32.84%.The business’s revenue was up 33.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $6.43 earnings per share. On average, analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 29.47 earnings per share for the current year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a dividend of $0.525 per share. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.3%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is presently 7.63%.

Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other Meta Platforms news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.84, for a total value of $5,589,088.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares in the company, valued at $8,014,978.24. This trade represents a 41.08% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,847 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.83, for a total value of $4,769,642.01. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 414 shares in the company, valued at approximately $251,641.62. The trade was a 94.99% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders have sold a total of 37,948 shares of company stock valued at $23,184,319 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on META. Guggenheim reduced their price objective on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, April 30th. Benchmark began coverage on Meta Platforms in a report on Tuesday, June 2nd. They set a “buy” rating for the company. Citizens Jmp decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $800.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, July 10th. Wall Street Zen downgraded Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday, May 16th. Finally, Bank of America dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $885.00 to $820.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, April 20th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have issued a Buy rating, eight have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $835.64.

View Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms

Key Stories Impacting Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Wells Fargo raised its price target on Meta and kept an overweight rating, signaling expectations for meaningful upside from current levels. Benzinga report on Wells Fargo target hike Positive Sentiment: Rothschild & Co Redburn also boosted its target and reiterated a buy rating, reflecting growing optimism that Meta can monetize AI more effectively. Benzinga report on Rothschild & Co Redburn target hike Positive Sentiment: Multiple reports highlighted Meta’s expanding AI strategy, including possible cloud/compute sales and large enterprise deals, which could create a new revenue stream and support margins over time. Positive Sentiment: Bank of America said Meta is positioned to beat second-quarter expectations, citing healthy ad demand and AI-driven improvements ahead of earnings later this month. Positive Sentiment: Wall Street commentary continues to frame Meta as a key beneficiary of the AI spending boom, with investors watching whether infrastructure investment can be monetized faster than expected. Neutral Sentiment: A comparison piece versus Pinterest and a broader “Mag 7” article mainly added background, but did not change the core investment thesis for META. Negative Sentiment: Meta is facing a Tennessee trial over claims that Instagram was designed to be addictive and contributed to youth mental-health issues, adding legal and regulatory risk. Negative Sentiment: A New York Times report said Meta’s AI moderation mistakenly banned user accounts, raising questions about product reliability and trust in its automated systems. Negative Sentiment: Ongoing investor concerns remain around heavy AI spending, data-center financing, and whether returns on that capital will justify the expense. Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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Due to Meta Platforms' (META 0.30%) plans to spend massive sums on artificial intelligence infrastructure, its shares have fallen substantially from the 52-week high of $796.25 they reached last August. But the stock's trajectory has changed in recent days, edging up past $600.

The catalyst for Wall Street's renewed optimism is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to turn the company's expensive AI infrastructure into a cloud computing business that sells access to its artificial intelligence models. This will provide it with a new revenue stream and diversify Meta beyond its advertising-fueled social media foundation.

That new direction could become a key sales driver, as it has been for other tech titans that pursued cloud computing, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and notably, Meta's chief rival in digital advertising, Google parent Alphabet. But is Meta joining this cadre too late, or does its AI opportunity change the dynamics of its investment thesis? 

Image source: Getty Images.

A look at Meta's cloud computing ambitions Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are the world's top three providers of cloud computing capacity, demonstrating that this market is a natural fit for tech businesses already pouring money into data center infrastructure. Meta -- the fourth of the big hyperscalers -- finally throwing its hat into the ring makes sense, especially since it plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures this year, up substantially from 2025's $72.2 billion.

However, it could take years for the revenue it generates from its cloud business to become meaningful. The Facebook parent hoped to make the metaverse a significant new sales and profit source, and even changed its name back in 2021 to reflect that goal, but to no avail. After enormous investments in its metaverse aspirations, the company continues to make nearly all of its revenue from advertising. For instance, $55 billion of its $56.3 billion in first-quarter sales came from ads.

Yet Meta's cloud strategy is a different beast. Artificial intelligence is already gaining broad market traction, unlike the metaverse. The company is providing its proprietary AI models to customers for a fee, akin to the approach adopted by the likes of OpenAI.

Moreover, the barriers to entry in this space are high. Developing a proprietary AI model requires significant funding to establish the necessary infrastructure. So much money is required that even Alphabet's enormous cash-generating business isn't enough to cover its costs; it recently engaged in a massive $84.75 billion equity offering, the largest in U.S. history.

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Meta's approach to AI Another factor making AI a unique opportunity is that Zuckerberg sees the tech evolving into a superintelligence. 

"We have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves," he said. Rather than this technology being used in a general capacity, he envisions AIs tailored to individual needs.

"Meta's vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone," Zuckerberg said. "We believe in putting this power in people's hands to direct it toward what they value in their own lives."

If Meta can deliver on this vision, its AI cloud business could become a substantial revenue source. After all, Google's cloud division delivered $17.7 billion in sales last year, representing fast growth from 2021's $5.5 billion, the year before OpenAI's ChatGPT exploded onto the scene.

Even though Meta's stock has ticked upward, its forward price-to-earnings ratio of 21 remains near its low point for the past year. This suggests a good share price valuation, making now an opportune time to consider buying Meta shares.

Robert Izquierdo has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Avanda Investment Management Pte. Ltd. purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm purchased 2,280 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,304,000. Meta Platforms comprises approximately 2.1% of Avanda Investment Management Pte. Ltd.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 17th largest holding.

A number of other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its position in Meta Platforms by 3.8% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after purchasing an additional 7,269,279 shares in the last quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $69,502,379,000 after purchasing an additional 105,154,977 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp boosted its position in Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $59,963,463,000 after buying an additional 4,395,763 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Meta Platforms by 1.7% in the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,806,712 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $34,734,628,000 after buying an additional 878,396 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors boosted its position in Meta Platforms by 0.8% in the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after buying an additional 310,947 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes META has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Wall Street Zen downgraded shares of Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Saturday, May 16th. Piper Sandler began coverage on Meta Platforms in a research note on Tuesday, June 2nd. They issued an “overweight” rating for the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $725.00 price objective (down from $825.00) on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, April 30th. Rosenblatt Securities restated a “buy” rating and set a $1,015.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, May 28th. Finally, Mizuho lowered their target price on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $835.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, May 5th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-six have assigned a Buy rating, eight have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $830.45.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on META

Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ:META opened at $645.85 on Tuesday. The firm has a market cap of $1.63 trillion, a PE ratio of 23.48, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.14 and a beta of 1.25. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $604.11 and its 200-day moving average is $626.63. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24, a quick ratio of 2.35 and a current ratio of 2.35. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52 week low of $520.26 and a 52 week high of $796.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, April 29th. The social networking company reported $10.44 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $6.67 by $3.77. The company had revenue of $56.31 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $55.56 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 32.84% and a return on equity of 36.93%. Meta Platforms’s revenue for the quarter was up 33.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $6.43 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 29.46 earnings per share for the current year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.3%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is presently 7.63%.

Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total value of $2,012,047.56. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 9,498 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,708,013.06. The trade was a 26.06% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total transaction of $1,268,023.68. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares in the company, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This represents a 65.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 37,948 shares of company stock worth $23,184,319 over the last ninety days. Insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Bank of America expects Meta to beat second-quarter estimates, citing healthy ad demand and AI-related improvements, with Q2 revenue now seen at $60.6 billion and EPS at $7.50 versus consensus of $60.2 billion and $7.18. Meta Platforms expected to top earnings estimates as ad growth remains healthy, says BofA Positive Sentiment: Investors are also encouraged by reports that Meta could monetize its AI buildout more directly, including a potential large-scale computing deal with Anthropic, which could help justify its heavy capex and reduce valuation pressure. Zuckerberg Is Quietly Turning Meta Into A Compute Provider Ahead Of Q2 Earnings Positive Sentiment: BlackRock’s $12 billion financing for new Meta data centers in Texas underscores strong outside confidence in Meta’s AI infrastructure strategy and signals continued investment in future capacity. BlackRock Leads $12 Billion Financing for New Meta Data Centers in Texas Neutral Sentiment: Commentary around Meta’s expanding AI ambitions and “compute provider” strategy reinforces the bullish AI narrative, but the market is still waiting for proof that the spending will translate into durable returns. Meta’s AI Ambitions Keep Expanding. Is META Stock Keeping Up? Neutral Sentiment: Meta faces a Tennessee trial over claims Instagram was designed to be addictive, adding headline risk and potential legal overhang for the stock. Meta faces Tennessee trial over allegations Instagram was designed to be addictive Negative Sentiment: Reports of temporary Facebook and Instagram outages may add near-term frustration for users and advertisers, though the impact appears more operational than fundamental. Users of Meta’s Facebook, Instagram report suffering some outages Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)

Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.

Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.

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A severe macroeconomic grid power shortage has quietly transformed physical artificial intelligence (AI) compute capacity into the technology sector's most valuable commodity. By leveraging its vast infrastructure to lease processing power to Anthropic, Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META is aggressively pivoting from a hardware consumer to a commercial cloud landlord, challenging established hyperscalers directly at the compute bottleneck.

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Shorting the Plug: The 100-Gigawatt Grid ShockMeta Platforms Today

$652.29 +6.28 (+0.97%)

As of 12:31 PM Eastern

This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.

52-Week Range$520.26▼

$796.25Dividend Yield0.32%

P/E Ratio23.71

Price Target$830.45

The conversation around artificial intelligence has historically centered on silicon. Investors constantly ask how many chips a business can buy and how fast it can deploy them. That narrative is rapidly evolving. Banking analysts project a U.S. electricity supply gap exceeding 100 gigawatts by 2030. Upgrading the domestic power grid requires high-voltage transformers and transmission lines that are currently experiencing multi-year manufacturing backlogs.

The primary bottleneck is no longer just securing graphics processing units, but finding an energized facility to plug them in. Companies with existing physical footprints, secured data centers, and locked-in power purchase agreements hold a structural advantage that competitors cannot replicate by raising capital.

Building Business: The 14-Gigawatt InfrastructureMeta Platforms is navigating an immense capital expenditure cycle. Management projects spending between $125 billion and $145 billion in 2026 alone, predominantly directed toward AI hardware and data center expansion.

To the untrained eye, that level of cash burn looks like an operational liability. When a technology enterprise spends that aggressively, market participants typically worry about margin compression, fearing that the upfront costs will erode bottom-line profitability before the investments generate a measurable return.

Viewing this purely as an expense misses the strategic land grab taking place. Meta Platforms is essentially acquiring highly sought-after real estate in a supply-shocked compute market.

The internal initiative, Meta Compute, aims to build approximately 14 gigawatts of AI compute capacity by 2027. Meta Platforms is bypassing the utility grid bottlenecks that currently paralyze smaller developers. The underlying enterprise value is shifting from purely digital advertising yields to the direct ownership of secured, energized infrastructure.

Signing the Lease: Anthropic Rents Meta's PowerThe clearest validation of this infrastructure thesis surfaced with preliminary negotiations to lease data center computing capacity to AI developer Anthropic. The proposed transaction is valued at up to $10 billion over 2 years and structured as monthly installments. The deal reportedly includes mutual early-termination clauses, acting as a pragmatic safety valve should Meta Platforms require the physical capacity for its own internal development.

Why would a tier-one AI developer bypass traditional hyperscalers like Amazon's NASDAQ: AMZN Web Services or Microsoft's NASDAQ: MSFT Azure? The decision comes down to absolute necessity and compute scarcity. Anthropic has faced substantial processing bottlenecks, previously enforcing usage limits on advanced models like Claude Fable because Anthropic lacked the raw capacity to run them at scale. Securing processing power from a social media giant mirrors Anthropic's recent multi-billion-dollar infrastructure lease with SpaceX. Top-tier AI developers are scouring the market for any energized compute they can find, regardless of the provider's primary industry.

Meta Platforms is not treating this as a temporary favor. The strategic hiring of former AWS Senior Vice President Dave Brown to lead Meta Compute signals a formalized assault on enterprise cloud market share. At the May 2026 shareholder meeting, management explicitly validated these commercial cloud ambitions, confirming that they receive weekly inbound inquiries for spare compute capacity. Meta Platforms is taking dormant GPU stockpiles intended for internal open-source model development and generating immediate commercial yield.

Collecting the Rent: High-Margin Infrastructure YieldTransitioning idle hardware into a $10 billion revenue stream creates a highly efficient strategic dynamic. Meta Platforms captures recurring, high-margin revenue from an industry peer while pricing its scarce physical processing power at a premium. This recurring revenue helps subsidize the immense capital expenditure required to build out the 14-gigawatt footprint, directly mitigating the margin compression investors initially feared.

Fundamentally, the underlying business remains remarkably robust. Meta's stock price recently closed at $646.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) Price Chart for Monday, July, 20, 2026

Meta has a market capitalization of $1.63 trillion and trades at a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 23.48, compared with a forward multiple of 21.93. When the forward multiple is lower than the trailing multiple, it indicates analysts expect earnings to grow faster than the current share price implies, suggesting a relatively grounded valuation given the broader technology sector's premium pricing.

Profitability metrics underscore a highly efficient operation. Meta Platforms commands a net margin of 32.84% and an exceptional return on equity of 36.93%. A high return on equity indicates that management is efficiently generating profits from shareholders' capital. Building physical data centers is historically a low-margin endeavor, but operating with a 36% ROE implies Meta Platforms knows how to extract maximum value from every dollar deployed. The balance sheet remains flush with liquidity, carrying a current ratio of 2.35 and a conservative debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24.

During the first quarter, Meta Platforms delivered a $3.77 earnings-per-share beat alongside a 33.1% year-over-year revenue growth. Despite the aggressive capital expenditure cycle, management continues to prioritize shareholder yield. The recent implementation of a 52.5-cent-per-share quarterly dividend provides a crucial baseline of support for long-term investors waiting for the hyperscaler pivot to mature.

The Sublet Trap: When Meta Needs Its Own PowerEvery major business model pivot carries execution risk. The core premise is that Meta Platforms possesses dormant compute stockpiles. Sustained use by external entities like Anthropic could eventually lead to compute rationing for internal open-source Llama model development. If Meta Platforms leases too much power, the organization risks stalling its own AI advancements.

Transitioning to a commercial hyperscaler forces the company into direct, capital-intensive competition with established cloud providers. This shift introduces enterprise-level sales and business-to-business support requirements to an organization that has historically been optimized for consumer data and digital advertising.

Investors tracking insider behavior will notice a net selling trend, reflecting capital distribution among executives. A confirmed transaction occurred on July 7, involving a corporate director liquidating $303,875.00 in equity. While insider selling often reflects routine portfolio diversification or tax obligations, it remains a metric worth monitoring during a structural transition.

Holding the Deed: Why Infrastructure Beats SiliconThe shift from a hardware consumer to a provider of physical infrastructure represents a fundamental evolution in how the market should value Meta Platforms. The secured data centers, power agreements, and localized grid connections are forming a physical moat that competitors will struggle to breach before the end of the decade.

Investors seeking exposure to the structural power shortages in the AI supply chain might want to evaluate companies that already hold energized assets rather than focusing solely on chip designers. Evaluating the upcoming July 29 earnings call for updates on the Anthropic lease and the broader Meta Compute initiative could provide valuable clarity on the pace of this cloud transition. Cautious market participants may prefer to watch how effectively the new enterprise sales division scales operations before allocating fresh capital to the space.

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SummaryCompaniesJury selection begins Monday in Nashville for a seven-week trialTennessee seeks penalties and an order requiring Instagram platform changesA New Mexico jury awarded that state $375 million in damages earlier this yearJuly 20 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab faces trial in Tennessee on Monday over the state's claims that Instagram's design is to blame for a youth mental-health ​crisis, one of several trials in the coming weeks testing allegations that the company's social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive.

Tennessee accuses ‌the company of violating the state's consumer protection law by knowingly designing a product that drives teens to compulsive use and misleading the public about its safety.

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The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, claims Meta failed to disclose extensive internal research showing Instagram could harm teens and continued offering features it knew were dangerous without warning users.

The state alleges founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was repeatedly ​warned by some Meta employees about research that found a negative impact on teens, but declined to fund efforts to minimize those harms and made misleading ​public statements about the amount of harmful content on the platforms.

Skrmetti is seeking financial penalties and a court order directing Instagram to ⁠modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to teens' mental health. The case focuses on features like autoplay, Instagram's Reels videos, notifications and designs ​that cause content to disappear after a certain period.

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the company already has built-in controls to protect the hundreds of thousands ​of Tennessee teens who use social media every day.

"We want them to do that in a protected space, which is why we’ve spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family," the spokesperson said.

The company has argued the state's claims of harm are based on the content posted on Instagram by its users, and ​that a federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, shields the company from liability for third-party content.

OVERLAPPING TRIALSJury selection will begin in Nashville on Monday for the ​first phase of the trial. The jury will decide whether Meta violated Tennessee law. If the jury finds it did, the case will move to a second phase where the judge will weigh ‌monetary penalties ⁠and potential changes to Instagram. Tennessee’s consumer protection law levies a fine of up to $1,000 per violation.

The trial, which is slated to last for seven weeks, is scheduled to overlap with at least two other trials against the company in courts in California as it faces thousands of lawsuits over similar claims in both state and federal court.

Nearly every state in the country has filed claims against Meta over its platforms’ alleged impact on children. A trial over claims against Meta brought by 29 states alleging the company violated ​federal law protecting data collected from children ​and additional state law claims from ⁠California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey is scheduled to begin on August 18 in federal court in California.

Separately, Meta and other social media companies are facing thousands of lawsuits brought by individuals and school districts in both state and federal court.

A trial against Meta and ​Snapchat parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N), opens new tab over the claims brought by a 15-year-old boy from Florida known as R.K.C., who alleges that social media ​damaged his mental health, ⁠is scheduled to begin on July 27.

The companies have broadly denied the allegations in these lawsuits, arguing they have sought to protect children and should not be liable for claims they say are based on content posted by their users.

SECOND STATE TRIALTennessee’s trial is the second to test claims in a lawsuit brought by a state against Meta.

New Mexico’s lawsuit against the ⁠company went to ​trial earlier this year, and a jury found the company had misled consumers about the safety of ​its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. The jury awarded the state $375 million in damages.

The judge held a separate bench trial over New Mexico’s claim the company had created a public nuisance, and is currently weighing whether to ​order the company to make changes and direct it to pay additional damages to repair the harms.

Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Diana reports on product liability, litigation, mass torts and the plaintiffs' bar. She previously worked at Law360 and the Chicago Sun-Times.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is focused on turning Meta Platforms (META 2.79%) into a leader in artificial intelligence (AI). An internal memo revealed plans to move Iris, its custom data center AI chip, into production in September, and to double the company's data center capacity to 14 gigawatts in 2027.

This is significant for investors because Meta's stock is not currently valued like an AI leader. It trades at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 21, a discount compared with most of the other "Magnificent Seven" stocks, which largely trade at multiples of around 25 or higher. If Meta succeeds at turning its heavy capital spending into more profitable growth, the market could re-rate the stock to a level more in line with its peers.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Zuckerberg sees a strategic advantage Earlier this year, Meta CFO Susan Li acknowledged that data center capacity planned 12 to 36 months ago is no longer sufficient. New data center construction requires a multiyear lead time, even as the demand for AI processing power continues to grow. This is creating a bottleneck in the technology's growth.

For Meta, resolving that issue is particularly important. Its social media platforms have over 3.5 billion daily active users, but AI is now a central part of how it monetizes them. The company is leaning heavily on AI to fine-tune its advertising business, which generates the bulk of the company's revenue.

"One of the primary goals of our Meta Compute initiative is to lead the industry in efficiency of building compute, and we expect that will be a strategic advantage over time," Zuckerberg said during the company's first-quarter earnings call.

Meta partnered with Broadcom to design its custom Iris chip, which will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. This application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) will ultimately help Meta to lower its AI computing costs and tailor its compute resources to its own use cases, including improving recommendation systems and advertising performance across its social media apps. AI has already had a massive impact on Meta's financials, helping drive revenue up 33% year over year in the first quarter.

What this means for the stock The stock has underperformed year to date, reflecting Wall Street's skepticism about Meta's ability to deliver a satisfactory return on investment from its heavy capital spending. The company has said it plans to spend up to $145 billion on capital expenditures this year. Those outlays will put pressure on its near-term earnings. The Motley Fool's research shows that the top four hyperscalers -- Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet -- plan to spend between $600 billion and $700 billion on capex in 2026.

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Still, Meta has already seen significant improvement in its ad performance with AI. Investors should expect further investment in custom chips and additional compute capacity to yield even greater returns over time.

These investments are not just about boosting ad performance. It's also laying the groundwork for new products, including AI agents for personal and business use.

Meta has the highest gross margin of any Magnificent Seven company. Its $124 billion in trailing cash flow from operations is a strategic advantage, helping fund its AI initiatives. This reflects the profitability of its ad business and explains why the stock should be re-rated to a higher valuation.

John Ballard has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Anthropic is in very preliminary talks to lease computing power from Meta, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC's Kate Rooney.

Shares of the social media giant climbed off their lows of the day Friday following a report from the New York Times that a potential deal was being discussed worth about $10 billion.

The talks come weeks after Anthropic announced a similar deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX to use the computing capacity at its Colossus 1 data center to improve capacity for paid subscribers.

They are a sign that Anthropic, one of the leading artificial intelligence labs, continues to make big commitments with other AI labs to use their access to AI chips made by Nvidia.

Access to enough AI chips remains a challenge for firms like Anthropic, which places usage limits on its most advanced models like Fable.

The talks also come after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in May that the social media company was considering entering the cloud computing business, in an effort to show investors that the firm can make money from AI investments beyond improvements to its current business. Dave Brown, a former senior executive at Amazon Web Services, is set to join Meta, CNBC has confirmed.

Meta could spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures, including for AI infrastructure, in 2026.

Last October, Zuckerberg said that companies are regularly "asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."

Meta declined to comment.

Read more CNBC tech newsElon Musk's Memphis AI empire is the epicenter of the data center backlashChinese startup Moonshot AI unveils Kimi model it says rivals OpenAI, AnthropicSpaceX stock falls after Starship test flight abortedMicrosoft's Nadella criticizes Anthropic's Fable for being 'editorially controlled'

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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is spending like an infrastructure company and being valued like a growth company. With full-year 2026 capex guidance raised to $125 to $145 billion to build out AI data centers, the question is whether shareholders get paid back for that bet.

Our proprietary model says yes. The 24/7 Wall St. price target for Meta is $903.93, implying 32.67% upside from $681.31. Our recommendation is buy with high confidence.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $681.31 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $903.93 Upside 32.67% Recommendation BUY Confidence Level 90% A Choppy Six Months, Then a Sharp Bid Back Meta has been a rollercoaster. Shares are up 12.96% in the past week and 14.8% over the past month, but only 3.39% year to date and down 3.78% over the past year. The stock sits 4% below its 52-week high of $793.65 after bouncing off a 52-week low of $519.78.

Q1 2026 was a blowout: EPS of $10.44 beat expectations of $6.66 on revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33.08% YoY. Ad impressions rose 19% and average price per ad rose 12%. The stock initially sold off to $608.75 a day after the earnings report as investors digested the raised capex line.

Why Bulls See a Breakout Ahead The bull case rests on Meta’s ability to convert AI compute into ad monetization. Family daily active people reached 3.56 billion, and Susan Li noted a 10% lift in Reels time spent on Instagram after Q1 ranking upgrades. Business AI conversations are running at more than 10 million weekly, up from 1 million at the start of the year.

Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is “on track to deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people.” Our bull scenario points to $1,033.70, a 51.72% return if Muse Spark and business agents scale on schedule.

What Could Go Wrong The bear case starts with capex intensity. Q1 capex hit $19 billion, up 46.8%, and Reality Labs still bled $4.03 billion. Insider activity is not encouraging: COO Javier Olivan has been selling weekly, with CFO Susan Li disposing of 9,195 shares on May 18, 2026 around $604 to $611.

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Bulls counter that these dispositions are largely scheduled RSU vestings rather than discretionary sales, and that the $8.03 billion tax benefit boosting Q1 EPS is a real cash item tied to CAMT R&D guidance. Our bear scenario lands at $773.09, a 13.47% return. Watch items include EU DMA pressure and 2026 youth-litigation trials.

How Meta Compares to Alphabet and Pinterest Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is the cleanest comp because both are AI hyperscalers funding data-center builds from ad cash flow. Alphabet’s 2026 capex guide of $175 to $185 billion dwarfs Meta’s plan, and Google Cloud posted $20.03 billion in Q1 revenue, up 63% YoY. Alphabet trades near a similar forward multiple with a diversified cloud engine Meta lacks, making Meta’s forward P/E of 21x look reasonable rather than rich.

Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) offers a smaller-scale ad-platform contrast. Pinterest grew Q1 2026 revenue 17.8% to $1.01 billion with 631 million MAUs. Meta’s 33% ad revenue growth at vastly larger scale, plus 41.44% operating margins, makes our $903.93 target look conservative against the peer set.

Meta Price Prediction 2026-2030 The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $903.93 with 90% confidence lines up with 57 buy ratings against zero sells. The tipping factor is monetization velocity: ad pricing plus AI-driven engagement gains are already compounding.

The setup looks constructive if Q2 2026 revenue lands at the top of the $58 to $61 billion guide. The thesis weakens if capex creeps past $145 billion without a matching lift in operating income.

Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $903.93 2027 $1,050 2028 $1,210 2029 $1,370 2030 $1,522.85 These projections assume Meta scales ad revenue faster than data-center depreciation and Reality Labs losses stabilize. Meaningful upside or downside could come from AI regulation shifts or a Muse family model breakthrough.

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In a recent interview, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said he can see a time in the future, perhaps only a year or two, when putting limits on Meta employees’ AI token spend will become necessary.

“I think that you can imagine, at least in a year or two … that the burn rate of a strong engineer might be the same as their salary, or their cost of employment. And in that world, you’re going to probably need to put in some caps,” the Meta executive said, while speaking on Lenny’s Podcast.

AI token spend, a reference to the cost of processing AI prompts and responses, has been a much-buzzed-about subject in recent days. Meta shut down an internal AI token spend leaderboard after AI costs put the company on track for billions of dollars in 2026.

Meta is not alone in rethinking its approach to AI experimentation. Uber also had an AI reckoning after it blew through its 2026 AI coding budget by April. Soaring token costs saw Microsoft cancel Claude Code licenses, consolidating its engineers around its own Copilot CLI tool instead.

Mosseri’s belief, he explained, is that AI token costs will have to be managed just like any other resource, offering an analogy to things like payroll or operating expenditure (OpEx), which is the day-to-day costs of running a business.

“I think of it like…any other resource,” Mosseri said. “I have to decide how to deploy capacity to my different teams because I have a limited number of GPUs and CPUs and storage and RAM etc. I have to decide how to deploy OpEx for labeling budgets across my teams. I have to decide how to deploy payroll for headcount across my teams.”

Token budgets will be the same, he added, noting that the cap per engineer would have to be proportional to the company’s trust in their ability to use the budget in an “ROI-positive” way.

Meta doesn’t currently have token caps for any employee, Mosseri said, but he believes that their use could be healthy in the future. Further down the road, he expects token costs to come down as the AI model makers enter a pricing war to attract people to use their tools over their competitors.

For now, the company has managed to rein in its token costs a bit by shutting down the “silly things” that it was doing, Mosseri noted — like that token spend leaderboard.

“It’s not that hard to build a token incinerator, and that doesn’t create a lot of value,” he said.

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Jim Cramer says a single AI product decision at Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) just moved the stock roughly $100 per share, and he is using it as Exhibit A for why big tech is nearly impossible to trim.

In his Sunday column, Cramer wrote that on the June 30 episode of Mad Money he argued a cloud business announcement from Meta would be “worth an easy 100 points, or $100 per share, for the stock,” back when shares closed at $563. Ten trading days later, they closed at $669.21.

That is a 14.81% move in a single week and a 17.31% move in a month on a company with a $1.7 trillion market cap. Cramer’s takeaway, published on CNBC: “By a simple stroke of a pen, Meta gives you 100 points, or almost 20%.”

The Catalyst Cramer Called The specific event was Meta signaling it would rent out excess AI compute. Zuckerberg told Bloomberg last week that “the offers that you get for using the compute are so high that it may make sense, in some cases, to rent out or consider those kind of deals instead of your own internal uses.” Meta jumped 5.97% on Friday, July 10, closing at $669.21.

The compute-monetization pivot lands on top of Meta Superintelligence Labs, the new AI research entity Zuckerberg introduced on the Q1 2026 call. He described it as a “milestone quarter” that included “the release of our first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs” and reiterated the goal of “personal superintelligence to billions of people.”

The Numbers Under the Rally Meta’s Q1 2026 report, filed with the SEC on April 29, showed revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33.08% year over year, and EPS of $10.44 against a $6.66 estimate. The advertising engine grew 33%, with ad impressions +19% and average price per ad +12%. Family daily active people reached 3.56 billion.

The catch: capex. Meta raised full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125–145 billion, up from a prior $115–135 billion range. Q1 capex alone hit $19 billion. Cramer’s argument is that the compute-rental pivot changes how investors should think about that spend, because dormant infrastructure suddenly becomes a revenue line rather than a capex sinkhole.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Debt Versus AI Payback The bear case Cramer is answering is leverage. Total debt has climbed from $13.87 billion at year-end 2021 to $86.77 billion at the end of Q1 2026. Capital lease obligations tied to AI data centers doubled to $28.02 billion. Debt-to-equity has moved from 0.111 to 0.356.

The offset is cash generation. Retained earnings reached $144.65 billion. Operating cash flow in Q1 was $32.23 billion. Liquid assets total $51.84 billion, and the current ratio sits at 2.35x.

Investors sorting the AI winners from the also-rans may find useful context in our 7 Stocks Powering the AI Boom (That Aren’t Chipmakers) report, which frames why hyperscalers with in-house monetization paths get valued differently than pure infrastructure plays.

What to Watch Next At 24x trailing earnings and 19x forward, Meta is not cheap on a growth-adjusted basis, but the analyst consensus target of $828.34 implies room above current levels, backed by 49 Buy and 8 Strong Buy ratings against zero Sell calls. Q2 revenue guidance is $58–61 billion.

Prediction markets are notably split on tempo. Polymarket traders assign a 64.5% probability that shares finish today lower, yet give Meta an 80.5% chance of ending 2026 with a higher valuation than OpenAI. That is the exact tension Cramer’s column captures: near-term digestion is possible, but the AI optionality is the reason he says these names are so hard to leave.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Meta didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

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Meta is pushing advertisers to use its AI tools — and results are proving chaotic: strangely twisted limbs, gibberish writing, or entirely changed products.

Meta's response to brands: That's on you, not us.

The tech giant has inserted a slew of AI features into its ad products in recent months. Working as designed, they can help make tweaks to ads that improve their likelihood of being clicked. But advertisers say the tools are clunky and generate misrepresentations and absurdities.

Business Insider spoke with eight advertisers and agency execs who said dealing with Meta AI problems had become routine.

Jessica Gleim, an ads consultant who works with female-founded brands, told Business Insider she regularly sees odd outcomes in Meta's AI creative recommendations for ads she's working on.

For one of her clients, a pajama brand, Meta recommended new assets that altered the actual product. The brand was promoting a pajama dress, and Meta suggested a new image with a shirt and pants. For another client, a networking group for women in Montana, Meta had a new vision for those ads: adding men.

Meta AI's suggested changes to a women's group ad included adding a man.  BI "It's not usable to help my clients grow their business," Gleim said.

While some of Meta's AI ad features are turned off by default, advertisers say they have been prone to bugs that accidentally turn them on. Karissa Tuccio, executive director of social and influencer at Mediassociates, said a bug that toggled AI settings on had regularly affected most of the 15 clients for whom she handles Meta advertising. She said she had flagged the bug to her Meta rep as recently as Thursday.

Meta's AI completely changed the product in this suggested ad tweak that Gleim encountered.  BI Outdoor retailer REI drew consumer backlash last month for running an Instagram ad depicting a nonsensical bike with two handlebars. REI said Meta had "auto-enrolled" it in an AI feature that spat out an "inaccurate" and "inappropriate" image.

A Meta spokesperson said that the company's terms of service state that "AI can make mistakes and that it is the advertiser's responsibility to review the AI outputs."

Advertisers' chief complaint about Meta's AI ad tools is simple: They feel they have to double-check all the AI features for each campaign to make sure nothing is inadvertently switched on or has gone haywire. With some advertisers and agencies running hundreds or thousands of ads at any given time, the extra steps required to wrangle the AI tools create more work.

REI's AI ad accident drew a big online backlash from customers.  BI "We somehow accepted that as a new standard operating procedure," said Rok Hladnik, CEO of the marketing agency Flat Circle, which manages around $200 million in annual Meta ad spending for numerous direct-to-consumer brands.

Brands and advertisers say that while AI failures can be an amusing talking point on the internet, they can pose real problems for a brand.

"When the AI starts generating weird creative or making unapproved changes, it can quietly damage brand perception — especially for anyone who cares about consistency," said Robert Webster, CEO of TAU Marketing, which manages around $500 million in annual ad spending across various platforms.

A Valentine's Day surpriseAround Valentine's Day, photographer and marketer Abigail Hogue was uploading an ad campaign to Meta. She works with a small business, Quite Literally Books, and had shot the creative assets for the holiday campaign with chocolates, macarons, candles, and books. Hogue was proud of the work she'd done.

"About 12 hours later, when everything was approved and started to run, I started getting some messages from friends and people that I knew and screenshots of some of these ads that were running, cheekily accusing me of AI slop," Hogue said.

The text on the products in the images was "garbled," and the "actual products look like knockoff iterations of themselves," she said.

Abigail Hogue was horrified at how Meta's AI altered her ad.  Quite Literally Books; BI When Hogue saw the AI ad, she went into a panic and edited the campaign in Meta's Ads Manager, turned off all AI creative enhancements, and then republished the ads.

She then spent hours in a back-and-forth with Meta customer service. Representatives told her it was a "sporadic" and "one-off occurrence," and also said it was a "glitch," according to screenshots of their exchange viewed by Business Insider. She requested a refund, and Meta acknowledged her request. Quite Literally Books said it hadn't received a refund as of Friday afternoon.

Other advertisers have told Business Insider about their strange Meta AI ads, ranging from an unrealistic granny in loungewear to a model whose leg appeared to be completely bent the wrong way.

Luke Jonas, chief growth officer of the marketing agency Nest Commerce, emphasized the importance of keeping a human in the loop when testing AI-generated ads.

"A machine optimizing for 6 million advertisers will occasionally give you two handlebars," Jonas said, referencing the REI ad.

While two advertisers said Meta appeared to have fixed a bug that was toggling AI settings on for their clients, Mediassociates' Tuccio said a similar issue persisted for her as of last week.

Tuccio said a Meta rep told her last week that Meta had developed a quality-control dashboard for big advertisers to ensure their ads don't go live with unwanted AI enhancements.

"She mentioned, 'If you guys have a big launch coming up, you can send me all the ad IDs, and we have an internal dash that will check to make sure all of the enhancements have been fully turned off,'" Tuccio said. "So that leads me to believe it has not been resolved."

'Meta's still the best platform'Starting last month, Meta began automatically applying an "AI info label" to ads when they use its AI tools — or third-party tools like Midjourney or Dall-E — to create or significantly edit their ads. To see it, users must click the three dots above an ad, select "about this ad," and then tap on "AI info." Google added labels last week to indicate whether ads were created or edited using AI.

Meta is also improving its AI image generation models. Last week, it began rolling out Muse Image, a model developed by its Superintelligence Labs, which can help advertisers develop their creative assets. (Following backlash, Meta on Friday removed a feature in Muse Image that let users generate AI images from other people's public Instagram posts, saying it "missed the mark.")

Still, advertisers say Meta's basic design encourages relinquishing control to the system, which can lead to disastrous results.

"The defaults are aggressive, the toggles are easy to miss, and the system is clearly designed to reduce friction so more money flows through the platform with less manual intervention," TAU's Webster said.

Meta says "millions of advertisers are finding value and improved performance using our Advantage+ creative tools to support ad creation." The Meta spokesperson added that the company's AI image generation tool, which creates variations based on a seed image provided by the advertiser, is turned off by default.

Meta isn't alone in automatically modifying advertisers' creative. Google's Performance Max and AI Max products also use AI to scrape ad copy from brand websites and automatically crop or shorten videos for placements such as YouTube Shorts. Some of these AI automation features are enabled by default, though Google has largely avoided the kind of high-profile issues Meta has seen.

Danny Weisman, cofounder of Obsessed Media, said the main complaint he's heard about Google from brands is that ads made with its AI tools could turn out looking "ugly."

"It's not like someone's hand is missing," he said.

Meta's ad business, which pulled in around $196 billion in revenue last year, remains essential to most brands' customer acquisition strategies. Its reach of 3.5 billion daily active users and highly sophisticated ad targeting platform make it difficult to quit, even if problems arise.

"That means it can make unpopular decisions that boost its own profits with near impunity, because most advertisers cannot realistically walk away," TAU's Webster said.

Then there's the simple truth: Meta ads generally get results.

"Meta's still the best platform," Gleim said. "It has the most robust options. It has the most data."

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Inside Amazon's plan to clobber rivals The Trade Desk and Google in a key area of advertisingMeet Cindy Rose, the former lawyer and top Microsoft exec set to become CEO of ad giant WPPHow X CEO Linda Yaccarino went from Elon Musk's fixer to out of a job in 2 yearsInside the political reckoning shaking up the ad industryMeet the 'reclusive' tech billionaire making an audacious bid to buy TikTokTop marketers are under a ton of pressure. They told me how they're trying to make themselves recession-proof.Big Tech workers got too used to perks. The pampering is over.

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Young founders are going viral modeDeath isn't the end: Meta patented an AI that lets you keep posting from beyond the graveDating apps are betting millions that AI will convince you to fall back in love with themHitting the social media jackpot is harder than ever — and it's changing the creator economyBig Tech's AI obsession is rattling creatorsNew startups race to bring back the 'old internet' vibes of the 2000sThe mysterious demise of a $1 billion social shopping appThe loneliness epidemic has given rise to a new crop of startups aiming to help people connect in real lifeIt's not just you — no one is posting on social media anymoreHow Instagram's unpredictable changes are giving influencers whiplashWhy YouTube subscriber counts have become an unreliable 'vanity metric' in the era of short videoInside the week that changed Facebook forever

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Meta's massive Hyperion data center project in rural Louisiana is getting much bigger and costlier, with a big assist from the state's government.

The company said in a blog post on Monday that the site in Richland Parish, Louisiana — home to what will be Meta's largest data center — will be a 5GW facility and cost over $50 billion. That's higher than the $27 billion figure that was revealed in October, when Meta and Blue Owl Capital formed a joint venture to help with the buildout and management of the facility, originally planned as a 2GW data center.

As Meta pursues its multi-hundred-billion-dollar buildout artificial intelligence buildout, the company and hyperscaler rivals Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon are taking advantage of tax rebates and energy deals being offered by states that are fighting to get a piece of the AI boom.

In late 2024, Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry signed into law a 20-year sales tax exemption for data centers built before 2029 as part of an effort to court Meta in the state, CNBC previously reported. Landry is set to host a press event on Monday in Baton Rouge.

"I'm a business guy," Landry told CNBC in an interview last year. "What we know is when you look at the overall comprehensive package here, it's in the black. For local government, and the state, and how you get to the bottom line is irrespective to me."

Meta is expanding the project as it seeks to build out enough AI infrastructure to meet demand. The announcement comes after Meta had its best week on the stock market since early 2024 following the release of two major AI models under the leadership of AI chief Alexandr Wang, head of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Investors have been looking for the company to start showing returns on its outsized AI investments.

Meta said in Monday's post that the company "pays the full costs of the energy, water, and related infrastructure the data center uses so consumers aren't paying the cost." Since construction of the Louisiana data center began in December 2024, local businesses have received over $1.6 billion in contracts from Meta, the company said.

"With this expansion, we will be investing over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems," Meta said in the post. The company didn't announce a financial partner for the expansion.

When the project began, the estimated price tag was $10 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post roughly six months later that the supercluster, named Hyperion, would be "able to scale up to 5GW over several years." Unlike traditional data centers, superclusters are packed with graphics processing units and related cutting-edge hardware tailored for AI workloads.

"Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher," Zuckerberg wrote.

A Meta spokesperson told CNBC that the Hyperion project should reach 2GW by 2030, but there's no timeline for when the full 5GW project will be completed.

WATCH: Meta rebound should continue through July.

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Meta Platforms (META +6.16%) is one of the big spenders in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Its capital expenditures in 2026 will total between $125 billion and $145 billion. At the midpoint, that estimate would be 88% higher than last year's figure.

However, investors have reason to be skeptical that this will result in a meaningful payoff.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who currently has a net worth of $231 billion, admitted that the company's AI bets "haven't come to fruition yet." He said that during an internal town hall on July 2, Reuters reported.

The social media stock dipped 5% that day, although it's up 19% in the month of July (as of July 10).

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Not living up to the hype Meta has been one of the fastest companies to commit fully to AI. Earlier this year, the business laid off 8,000 employees, translating to 10% of its workforce. It also moved 7,000 people into different AI roles. One of the goals was to develop and implement AI agents throughout the organization, an objective that so far has failed to live up to expectations.

Zuckerberg said notable progress should be made in the coming months. But based on the immediate negative share-price reaction, investors were less enthusiastic.

Today's Change

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The slow AI headway is giving shareholders flashbacks to late 2021, when the business changed its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms. The company believed that the metaverse would replace mobile internet as the next major computing platform, a strategic pivot that Meta has since scaled back.

Investors haven't been pleased with Reality Labs' financial performance. This segment of Meta posted a cumulative operating loss of $77 billion during the five-year period from the start of 2021 through 2025. But this dollar figure is peanuts compared to the money being allocated to AI.

Zuck's gamble makes sense With a world-class advertising platform and 3.56 billion daily active users across its family of apps, Meta aims to leverage AI not only to boost engagement and drive higher ad revenue, but to also bring personal superintelligence to everyone around the world. This gives the business a different position than its hyperscaler peers, which largely sell AI and other computing capabilities to enterprise clients.

Meta's huge AI spending makes sense, since the company wants to lead the AI revolution from an individual's perspective. However, Zuckerberg's comments about AI progress being slow have three implications for the broader AI secular trend.

It's almost impossible to precisely measure early results from AI implementation, even for a dominant technology business. Worries about AI agents replacing jobs appear to be overblown right now. And no one has any idea what the ultimate payoff will be from the unprecedented AI spending taking place.

People walk behind a logo of Meta Platforms company, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

July 10 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O), opens new tab said on Friday it is discontinuing an AI feature launched this ​week that allowed users to generate images using public Instagram accounts, ‌after drawing widespread criticism over privacy concerns, including from a Hollywood union.

"Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public ​content could be referenced in this way," Meta said in a statement.

Learn about the latest breakthroughs in AI and tech with the Reuters Artificial Intelligencer newsletter. Sign up here.

"We've ​heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so ⁠it's no longer available," it said.

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, had launched Muse ​Image on Tuesday, its first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. The feature, ​integrated into its Meta AI chatbot, can use photos as input and lets users edit generated images directly through sketches.

The feature soon faced backlash over privacy concerns and being an ​automatic opt-in for users.

Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder, known for "Hacks," criticized the feature ​on Instagram, saying it had been turned on automatically and urging users to turn it ‌off.

SAG-AFTRA, the ⁠union representing actors and other media professionals, also urged members and other Instagram users on Thursday to opt out of the feature.

"Anything other than a clear and conspicuous opt-in for these types of uses of Instagram users' images ​is unacceptable, and an ​utter miscalculation of ⁠public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use," SAG-AFTRA said.

Following Meta's decision to remove the ​feature, SAG-AFTRA welcomed the move.

"With the dangers of nonconsensual digital ​replicas well ⁠known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise. We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do," a union spokesperson said.

The reversal ⁠reflects ​increasing pressure on technology companies to give users ​clear control over how their publicly shared content is used by AI features.

Reporting by Natalia Bueno Rebolledo ​and Mrinmay Dey in Mexico City; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Tom Hogue

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta shares rallied on Friday, lifting their gains for the week to 15%, on pace for the best weekly performance since early 2024, as optimism builds around CEO Mark Zuckerberg's artificial intelligence strategy.

Three months after introducing Muse Spark, its first proprietary foundation AI model, Meta made two significant announcements this week. On Tuesday, Meta released Muse Image, a new AI model for creating images, and part of an effort to attract creators and advertisers to its new subscription offerings. And on Thursday, the company unveiled Muse Spark 1.1, aimed at running agentic and coding workloads.

This week's revelations show Meta is aggressively trying to make a splash in AI models and compete against OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, which all have big head starts. They also underscore the company's efforts to diversify beyond ads with new revenue streams, and point to progress at Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is being led by Alexandr Wang.

A five-day chart of Meta stock.

With the latest rally, the stock has erased its losses for the year and is now up more than 2%. It's still way behind the Nasdaq, which has gained 13%

Meta also got a boost from reports that the company is progressing with its custom, in-house AI chips, revealed back in March as part of its data center expansion plans. Meta expects to start manufacturing its first chip, code-named Iris, in September as part of its goal to reach 14 gigawatts of computing power next year, according to Reuters.

"Meta may have engineered significant cost savings to get capacity cost per MW well below our and Street expectations," Justin Post, an analyst at Bank of America analyst, wrote following the report.

When Meta reported first-quarter earnings in April, the company raised 2026 guidance for its capital expenditures, or capex, to come between $125 billion and $145 billion and saw its shares sink 7%. At the time, investors appeared concerned about Meta's big AI spending that has yet to create new lines of businesses.

Now that Meta is conveying to investors a more concrete plan about how it will use its ever-growing data center infrastructure, such as potentially competing in the fiercely competitive cloud computing business against giants like Amazon and Microsoft, Wall Street appears more at ease.

It's possible that Meta could further increase its 2026 capex guidance when it reports its second-quarter earnings, BNP Paribas Equity Research senior analyst Nick Jomes said in a research note earlier this week. Jomes said that BNNP estimates Meta to raise that figure to come in between $135 billion to $155 billion.

"While we expect near-to medium term elevated capex, we believe Meta is well positioned to generate ample revenue to support its spending, driven by monetization of its own AI initiatives, advertising share gains, incremental subscription revenue, an optionality of cloud offering, and fees for external use of its AI models," Jomes said in the research note. "Recent subscription offer, the potential cloud offering as well as fees for access to its AI model all serve to provide incremental revenue beyond its core advertising revenue, diversify its revenue stream, and generate additional EBITDA and free cash flow."

watch now

Reports that Meta Platforms (META +2.06%) has signed a "multi-year" deal to secure flash memory from Sandisk (SNDK +12.30%) sent Sandisk stock flying -- and Meta stock dying -- early this morning. Meta stock initially fell 4% on the news, before recovering.

As of 11:40 a.m. ET, Meta stock is back in the green, up 0.5%.

Image source: Getty Images.

Details, please Citing internal Meta documents, Reuters reports the social media giant will buy NAND from Sandisk, DRAM from Samsung, and fiber optics from Sumitomo as it builds out its very own artificial intelligence computing infrastructure.

Additional beneficiaries may include Broadcom (AVGO +4.51%), which is helping Meta design Iris AI semiconductors for its data centers, and also Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM +0.83%), which will contract-manufacture these AI chips.

All these companies are declining to officially confirm the details of the Reuters report. Regardless, investors are "buying the rumor" and shares of all the U.S. publicly traded stocks named -- Sandisk, Broadcom, and TSMC -- are moving higher today.

Today's Change

(

2.06

%) $

12.42

Current Price

$

615.54

Why Meta stock is slumping Meta stock, on the other hand, is not moving higher, or at least not much. Indeed, Meta stock initially sold off on this news.

Why is that? Consider that Meta has plans to spend $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, and today's Sandisk news seems to confirm this plan is on track. On the one hand, that kind of money will buy Meta a lot of AI capacity as it competes with the likes of Alphabet, OpenAI, and Anthropic. On the other hand, $145 billion is even more than the $136.6 billion Meta is expected to bring in via cash from operations this year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Meta's skating close to the edge these days, and if that makes investors nervous, I totally understand.

Rich Smith has positions in Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Broadcom, Meta Platforms, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Meta launches a new AI coding model with 'very aggressive' pricing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says By You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC Meta could spark a price war in the booming AI coding market.

The tech giant announced its latest AI model, Muse Spark 1.1, on Thursday, saying it performs well on industry tests for coding and AI agents. It's Meta's first AI model that it charges users for.

In comments on X, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the model has a "very low price," though the company hasn't announced the cost yet. He also called out other AI companies for pricing their chatbots at "very extreme" levels in comments to Bloomberg. He told Bloomberg that the model outperformed Google's Gemini in several categories, including agents, coding, and other capabilities.

"We think that there's a real ability to be able to offer frontier or very high-level intelligence at a much more affordable cost," Zuckerberg told the outlet.

The model, which isn't fully available to developers yet, marks the latest milestone for Meta's AI efforts — and shows the company intends to compete on price.

If Meta's new AI models can compete with widely-used coding tools from rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Cursor, that could represent a huge new source of revenue. Meta's stock was up nearly 2% on Thursday.

The cost of using AI has become a growing concern for companies as employees incorporate the technology into more of their day-to-day work. Companies have been throttling their employees' use of AI in recent months as vibe coding takes off. Coinbase, for example, now limits its engineers' weekly AI spending to $500 to $5,000 a week.

Meta quoted one of its customers, AI coding startup Cline, saying that the new AI model's price point makes it easy to run heavy AI coding tasks at scale.

"That combination is rare, and it's exactly why we wanted Cline developers to have access early," Saoud Rizwan, the Cline CEO, said on Meta's website.

Meta is spending massive amounts of cash on AI, raising its capital expenditure guidance for this year to $125-$145 billion, up from a previous estimate of $115-$135 billion. Meta remains highly dependent on its ads business, which accounts for about 98% of its total revenue, according to its first-quarter earnings results.

"We believe Meta is well positioned to generate ample revenue to support its spending, driven by monetization of its own AI initiatives, advertising share gains, incremental subscription revenue, an optionality of cloud offering, and fees for external use of its AI models," BNP Paribas Equity Research senior analyst Nick Jomes wrote in a note to investors on Thursday.

Meta is also working on a coming AI model codenamed "Watermelon," which its AI chief Alexandr Wang says has caught up to one of the latest versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The model uses "an order of magnitude" more computing power than Meta's previous model, Wang told staff last week, Business Insider reported earlier.

Meta didn't respond to a request for comment.

Have a tip? Contact Charles via email at [email protected] or on Signal and WhatsApp at 628-282-2811. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

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Charles Rollet You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Charles Rollet is BI's tech correspondent in San Francisco. Prior to joining BI, Charles worked at TechCrunch covering startups and VC. Charles is based in the Bay Area, where he enjoys hiking with his dogs. You can contact Charles securely on Signal at charlesrollet.12 or +1-628-282-2811.

Meta Mark Zuckerberg AI More

While the company continues rolling out consumer-facing AI products—including the recently introduced Muse Image and upcoming Muse Video models—Meta has also been quietly embedding artificial intelligence throughout its own operations, particularly inside its engineering organization.

Meta Is Using AI To Build MetaMeta’s internal AI push extends well beyond public-facing products.

According to reports, the company has set ambitious internal goals for AI-assisted software development, encouraging engineers to adopt coding tools such as DevMate, Metamate and Google’s Gemini. Some engineering teams have targets for AI to assist with the majority of their code changes, while Meta has also pushed broader adoption of AI tools across its technical workforce.

Separately, Meta has been consolidating many of its workplace AI capabilities into Metamate, its primary internal enterprise AI assistant. The company has said it wants Metamate to become the starting point for a wide range of employee tasks—from conducting research and prototyping new features to preparing presentations and coordinating work across teams.

Why Investors Should CareThe strategy highlights a different way to think about AI returns. Rather than measuring success solely by chatbot users or subscriptions, investors may also want to consider how artificial intelligence improves Meta’s own productivity.

Engineering talent represents one of the company’s largest operating expenses. If AI helps developers write code faster, automate routine tasks or shorten product development cycles, Meta could improve the return on one of its biggest investments without adding new revenue streams.

That’s a different kind of AI payoff—one driven by operating leverage rather than direct monetization.

Investment TakeawayMeta’s consumer AI products will continue to attract headlines, and Muse Image is the latest example of the company’s push to expand AI across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and its Meta AI assistant.

But the company’s internal AI strategy may prove just as significant.

By integrating tools like DevMate and Metamate into everyday engineering and workplace workflows, Meta is betting that AI won’t just build better products—it will help build a more productive Meta. For long-term investors, that could make the company itself one of the biggest beneficiaries of its own AI revolution.

Image by Tada Images via Shutterstock

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