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BayBridge Capital Group LLC lowered its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 67.4% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 837 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,729 shares during the quarter. BayBridge Capital Group LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $471,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the period. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its holdings 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 worth $69,502,379,000 after purchasing an additional 105,154,977 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $59,963,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,395,763 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during 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 purchasing an additional 878,396 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during 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 purchasing an additional 310,947 shares during the period. 79.91% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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

Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale Analyst Ratings Changes Several brokerages have recently commented on META. DA Davidson decreased their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $700.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Rosenblatt Securities cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $1,015.00 to $883.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their price objective on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have assigned a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.

Get Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms Stock Down 0.9% Shares of META stock opened at $589.85 on Friday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1-year low of $520.26 and a 1-year high of $796.25. The company has a market cap of $1.50 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 2.23 and a quick ratio of 2.23. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $595.94 and its 200 day moving average price is $620.41.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is presently 7.91%.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $910,200. This trade represents a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total value of $280,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. This represents a 14.52% 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 36,280 shares of company stock valued at $22,075,696 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

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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Meta said it would remove harassing videos filmed with its AI glasses, but its content moderation so far has been uneven, with dozens of videos remaining on its Instagram platform.

Meta; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

"Are you a secret code?" a young man in Meta glasses asks a woman in a tank top on the sidewalk. "What do you mean, 'a secret code?'" she responds, seemingly confused as the man's glasses record her. "Because I'm trying to crack you," he says.

The interaction, filmed by content creator Colin Allen for his Instagram account @thatiscolin, is one of dozens of similar videos that I found from popular and verified accounts on the platform in the month after Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said Meta would remove "harassing" pickup line videos filmed with Meta glasses.

After I sent Meta a link to 20-plus pickup and other harassing "prank" videos from different accounts, the company removed the "secret code" video and eight others. Allen, who describes himself as a "lifestyle and comedy creator" and not a pickup artist, had used the same line to different women in several other videos, which remain up. He didn't respond to my attempts to contact him.

An Instagram account that does some pickup line content, including asking women on the sidewalk, "Are you a secret code? Because I'm trying to crack you." 

Instagram / @thatiscolin

Videos from pickup artists using Meta glasses to approach women in public have emerged as a genre on Instagram's Reels and TikTok, with some of the popular videos racking up millions of views. These videos of men trying pickup lines on women on the street, along with pranks on cashiers or service workers, are tagged on Instagram as being shot on "Meta glasses."

Being associated with that kind of icky content can't be good for the reputation of the devices, which some people are already referring to as "creep glasses."

Tracy Clayton, a spokesperson for Meta, told me that thousands of pieces of content have already been removed, and several large accounts have been taken down. The recent enforcement action falls under Meta's existing Community Standards on bullying and harassment, which broadly forbid content that sexualizes other adults or sexually harasses people. Additionally, search terms for "rizz" or "cold approach," common pickup slang, are now blocked in search.

Meta's Instagram blocks the search terms for pickup artist content like "rizz" and "cold approach" (meaning to approach a stranger). 

Instagram / screenshot

My last month spent in pickup-line video land has shown me that Meta's enforcement has been uneven in the weeks since Mosseri's remarks. "We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can," Mosseri said in mid-July.

When initially reporting on Mosseri's comments, I found two large pickup artist accounts that had been deactivated as part of the recent enforcement wave. A few days after my article was published last month, one of those accounts was reactivated (a Meta spokesperson said this was by error, and the account was re-banned after I brought it to their attention).

Carolina Are, a digital criminologist based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that Meta and Mosseri's response to the harassing AI glasses videos highlights isn't enough.

"There is a backlash, and then Meta tends to minimize its own responsibility for it. They talk about how this is user-generated behavior or an error in enforcement," Are said. "But they don't recognize the systemic issues that are causing that to happen, and they take no accountability for what their policies or infrastructure have done to enable that behavior," Are said.

These pickup and prank videos made with Meta glasses aren't exclusive to Instagram; they also exist on YouTube and TikTok.

A spokesperson for TikTok told me that it has policies against harassing content. After I sent a list of four videos of pickup artists who also posted on Instagram, TikTok took down two of them, citing its policy on bullying and sexual harassment.

Boot Bullwinkle, a representative for YouTube, told me it has policies against certain kinds of harassment and dangerous prank videos. YouTube has been dealing with moderation issues around street pranks and pickup artists for years. After I sent four examples of channels that posted Meta glasses pickup content, YouTube said it took down "several" of the videos and removed one of the channels from its monetization program.

A headache of its own making

A pair of Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses. Mark Zuckerberg said sales of Meta's AI glasses tripled last year and he believes they are "some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history." 

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Mosseri personally delivering the message that Instagram will take down this specific kind of content is unique among video platforms. That may be because of Instagram's unique relationship with the Meta glasses: Not only are these unsavory videos a headache of its own making, but they also risk harming the public perception of a product that Meta invested big bucks in building and marketing.

Plenty of people are buying up Meta's AI glasses. Sales have grown since their launch in 2021, topping 7 million units in 2025, more than triple the previous year. Meta is the early leader in the smart glasses race.

They've been a bright spot for Meta's money-losing Reality Labs department, which faced layoffs this year. They're also key to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI bet.

"I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you're kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you're working with, or competing against," Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call.

The recent backlash — remember when Kylie Jenner's Instagram comments were flooded with people calling her signature Meta glasses "pervert glasses"? — presents a thorn in Meta's side.

"In many cases, the public-facing rules that users see are vague enough to be open to the discretion of the platform to make those kinds of shifts and changes at any time," said Sarah T. Roberts, faculty director and cofounder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

Meta is betting AI could supercharge its moderation efforts. Zuckerberg and other execs have long said the old way of doing things, leaning heavily on third-party human contractors, doesn't scale. The theory goes that AI can be trained to autonomously flag violating content. In June, Meta told the Financial Times that initial tests showed that its AI systems made fewer mistakes than human moderators and flagged more violating content. The jury's still out on whether that will prove to be the case long term.

Deactivated one day, reactivated the nextAfter seeking out and interacting with some of these pickup line videos in Reels, I started getting served more and more of them. I no longer needed search terms to find them; my Reels feed was filled nearly entirely with that genre of content.

One creator whose account was active weeks after Mosseri's remarks is Caren Babaknia. He has 174,000 followers and posts videos of himself driving up to women he identifies in the caption as escorts and talking to them while wearing Meta glasses.

An account that posted multiple videos of paying women that appear to be sex workers to watch a video of memes and gambling ads on his laptop. 

Instagram / @carenview

In one video captioned "Wasting ESCORTS time by making them watch brainrot" he offers a woman who approached his car $50 in exchange for watching a video on his laptop of brainrot memes. The woman agrees, and he plays the video, which includes an ad for a gambling app. He hands her the cash.

I spoke with Babaknia on the phone to get his perspective on videos made with Meta glasses. He told me he believes the women in his videos are aware that he was filming them because his content is so viral that they knew him.

He voiced disdain for pickup artists with Meta glasses, however.

"I think the rizz content is very cringe," he told me. "I think those are normal girls and they don't deserve to be videoed without their consent."

After including one of Babaknia's videos in the list I recently sent to Meta, his account was deactivated the following morning. Babaknia told me that he was going to appeal. A day later, his account was back up with the videos restored.

It's not unusual for changes to enforcement in content moderation to take time to implement at scale. But as Meta glasses get increasingly popular, it seems likely that Instagram will face pressure to deal with this — and potentially new forms of bad behavior — more and more.

"It's not like they just started those platforms yesterday," said Roberts from UCLA. "It's not like they don't have 20 years now of understanding how people will behave at the most depraved levels if given a chance."

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Katie Notopoulos

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Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture. She covers topics such as internet culture, Big Tech, retail, AI, parenting in the digital age, and personal tech.Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review. Based in New York, you can reach her by email [email protected] or find her on Twitter. Bluesky, and Threads @katienotopoulos.Some of her stories include:

Google AI said to put glue in pizza — so I made a pizza with glue and ate itThe Zuckermoon is overGen Z doesn't want to say "hello" when answering the phone. I'm concerned. Wait, is Walmart cool now?Mark Zuckerberg has created the saddest place on the internet with Meta AI's public feedHow Instagram got its mojo backAm I the JD Vance of my group chat?We need to talk about whatever's happening with Starbucks' drinksThis chart shows a key reason why millennial parents are miserableIt's not just you. Eggshells really are chipping more.

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Posted by Defense World Staff on Aug 13th, 2026

Baskin Financial Services Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 34.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 53,073 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 13,587 shares during the period. Meta Platforms comprises 2.4% of Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 23rd largest position. Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $29,895,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in META. RHL Group LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter valued at about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $29,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the first quarter worth about $36,000. Finally, Bayban boosted its position in shares of 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 buying an additional 35 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several brokerages recently commented on META. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $815.00 to $725.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial lowered their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $840.00 to $770.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Robert W. Baird reduced their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt decreased their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.32.

View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Meta Platforms

Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of the business’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 owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,014,978.24. The trade was a 41.08% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. 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 the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total value 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 represents a 65.03% 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. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 38,407 shares of company stock valued at $23,391,097. 13.53% of the stock is owned by insiders.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta officially launched its standalone Facebook Creator Studio app for iOS, offering creators AI-generated growth advice and community-management tools. The rollout could support engagement, creator retention and future monetization. Facebook officially rolls out its standalone Creator Studio app with AI tools for creators Positive Sentiment: Meta and Nvidia released open-weight AI models as U.S. technology companies seek to compete with Chinese labs. Meta’s open-source strategy may accelerate adoption, improve its advertising products and challenge higher-cost AI rivals. Meta and Nvidia plant very firm flag in open-weight AI race Positive Sentiment: Several analysts continue to cite Meta’s strong advertising business, AI-driven improvements in ad conversions and long-term AI optionality. The consensus price target remains substantially above the recent trading level, providing a potential valuation support. The Market Shaved 10% Off Meta Over a Month Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s planned acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus is being unwound after regulatory pressure, with Manus returning to independent operations. The development limits Meta’s acquisition strategy but removes uncertainty surrounding the transaction. AI startup Manus to resume independent operations as deal with Meta unwinds Negative Sentiment: A German advocacy group filed a criminal complaint alleging that Meta’s AI smart glasses violate privacy laws. The complaint adds regulatory risk to Meta’s growing hardware and wearable-AI strategy. German advocacy group lodges criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses Negative Sentiment: Meta began trial proceedings against claims from 29 U.S. states that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to children. A loss could result in significant damages, platform changes and thousands of additional lawsuits. Meta, 29 states head to court in youth social media litigation Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that AI infrastructure spending of up to $145 billion in 2026 is compressing margins and free cash flow. Recent commentary also highlighted weaker technical momentum, leaving META more vulnerable to selling pressure. Meta Q2: Strong Growth, But The AI Bill Is Becoming Hard To Ignore Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $578.85 on Thursday. The company has a quick ratio of 2.23, a current ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $796.25. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $596.66 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $621.07. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a PE ratio of 21.80, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently declared 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 of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.

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.

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Meta Platforms currently trades at $599.12, while Wall Street’s consensus price target sits at $756.95, implying roughly 26.3% upside.

The company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads spent much of the past year as one of the Magnificent Seven‘s steadier performers. A bruising Q2 report and rising anxiety over AI capex have sliced Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) into the lower end of its 12-month range. The gap between price and consensus deserves unpacking, because the Street’s highest analyst thinks it should be far wider.

The Q2 Miss That Sliced 10% From the Stock Meta fell 10.47% over the past month after a Q2 print that snapped a six-quarter EPS beat streak. Revenue of $60.80 billion beat expectations by 0.85% and grew 27.96% year over year, but EPS of $6.18 missed the $7.22 estimate by 14.42%. The miss stemmed from $2.40 billion in youth-related legal charges and $1.18 billion in severance from a May headcount reduction of roughly 8,000 employees. Operating margin compressed to 31% from 43%, and free cash flow collapsed 91.31% to $784 million as quarterly capex hit $30.12 billion.

Shares dropped from $597.37 to $527.50 in the hour after the release before clawing back part of the loss. It was company-specific weakness. Alphabet rallied on strong Cloud numbers the same week, and the S&P 500 gained through the stretch. Meta raised the low end of FY2026 total expenses to $165 billion to $169 billion and lifted its remaining-year tax rate assumption to 15% to 17%.

Why Analysts Refuse to Downgrade Sell-side conviction has barely budged. Of the 62 analysts covering Meta, 55 rate it Buy, 7 rate it Hold, and none rate it Sell. The $756.95 average target still implies solid upside despite the miss.

The most aggressive call comes from Barton Crockett at Rosenblatt Securities, who maintains a Buy with a Street-high $1,117 target, implying roughly 86% returns over the next year. The thesis: layering autonomous agents onto WhatsApp’s business messaging footprint could power automated customer support, storefronts, and sales execution for millions of merchants at high margin.

Meta’s nuclear Power Purchase Agreements with Oklo, Vistra, TerraPower, and Constellation, totaling over 7.7 gigawatts offers a way to de-risk the AI infrastructure buildout without straining the balance sheet. Ad ranking gains are already showing up in the numbers (an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook from the new Meta Generative Recommender) plus a Family of Apps base of 3.60 billion daily active people. The bull case argues the market is punishing a one-quarter cost surge rather than repricing long-term earnings power.

Peers Held Up as Meta Slid Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at $343.80 versus a $428.04 target for roughly 24.5% upside. Shares are down 8.96% on the week but up 71.53% over the past year on a Q2 blowout. Consensus tilts heavily Buy, with 58 Buys and 6 Holds. Wall Street sees slightly less upside here than at Meta.

Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) trades at $23.75 against a $28.97 target for about 22.0% upside. The stock is down 30.54% year over year despite a solid Q2 beat, hurt by retail-ad exposure. Ratings split roughly evenly between Buy and Hold, with the smallest implied upside in the group.

Snap (NYSE:SNAP) trades at $5.51 versus a $7.28 target for 32.1% upside. Ratings are far weaker: mostly Holds, a handful of Buys, and three Sell-side ratings. Shares are down 31.72% year to date.

Snap holds the largest consensus upside at 32%, but on shakier conviction. Meta ranks second on consensus math yet carries the strongest sentiment tilt, and Rosenblatt’s Street-high call is the single largest target across the peer set.

How Far Behind the S&P 500 Meta Has Fallen Meta shares trade at $599.12 with a $756.95 consensus target and 26.3% implied upside. The recent stretch shows the dislocation: Meta is off 10.47% over the past month, 9.08% year to date, and 21.52% over the past year, while the S&P 500 is up 2.07% for the month, 13% year to date, and 21.17% over the year.

Valuation supports the bull view: trailing P/E of 22, forward P/E near 18, and FCF yield near 3.5% before the AI capex cycle peaks. Polymarket traders assign just 42% probability that Meta closes this week above $600, so short-term crowd sentiment is far more cautious than the consensus target.

Weighing the Bull and Bear Cases The bull thesis rests on the AI capex cycle producing the returns management projects. Ad ranking gains are already visible, over one million businesses are using Meta business agents weekly on WhatsApp and Messenger, and if even two of the four monetization vectors (recommender lift, agents, glasses, and enterprise compute) scale on schedule, the $756.95 consensus and even Rosenblatt’s $1,117 target look reasonable.

The bear case sees this as the top of a spending arms race that eats operating income faster than AI can monetize it. Free cash flow collapsed 91% last quarter, youth-litigation trials are queued through year-end, and FY2026 expense guidance of $165 billion to $169 billion leaves no cushion for another surprise.

On balance, Meta is compounding revenue at 28% and funding its future entirely with cash from core apps. That setup warrants close monitoring, particularly on any further weakness in the shares.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a vision for artificial intelligence centered on making so-called superintelligence broadly available to individuals, arguing that the technology should expand human capabilities rather than primarily replace workers.

In a 6,500-word essay titled “The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future,” published on Monday, Zuckerberg said advanced AI could create opportunities in entrepreneurship, scientific research, education and personal productivity.

“We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg argued that concentrating advanced AI among a small number of companies, governments or individuals could create risks by placing too much economic and political power in limited hands. Instead, he said Meta wants to distribute AI capabilities widely and give individuals greater control over how the technology is used.

A central part of his argument is that AI’s biggest contribution should be invention rather than automation. He said future systems could help people discover medicines, develop businesses, create products and conduct scientific research, while enabling individuals to pursue ideas that previously required larger teams or significant capital.

“I predict that this will not only lead to much greater economic growth, but also more employment over time rather than less,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Zuckerberg also described a future in which people have personal AI agents that understand their goals and interests and assist with areas such as health, careers, finances and hobbies. He said AI could also provide personalized tutoring, creative tools and support for scientific research.

Meta plans to offer free AI tools accessible to billions of people, while users seeking additional computing capacity could pay for greater access, Zuckerberg wrote.

He also rejected the idea that the development of increasingly capable AI should require concentrating power among a small group of institutions.

“The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will it be a tool that empowers everyone?”

Zuckerberg acknowledged that superintelligence will bring significant challenges, but argued that broad access could help distribute its benefits while limiting the risks associated with concentrated control.

“Superintelligence holds the promise of giving everyone that power, and building a positive future for everyone,” he wrote.

Shares of Meta traded up 1.3% at about $600 on Monday, down about 9% so far this year.

Mark Zuckerberg has a simple answer to one of the biggest questions in AI: Who should get superintelligence? Everyone.

In a 6,500-word essay published Monday, the Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) CEO argued against concentrating increasingly powerful AI in the hands of a few companies, governments or institutions. Instead, he wants Meta to make advanced AI broadly available, including free or affordable versions for billions of people.

The vision comes with an enormous infrastructure bill.

Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — expects to spend $130 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026. That includes investments in data centers and other infrastructure. The company spent $31.1 billion on capital expenditures in the second quarter alone.

Not all of that spending is specifically for Zuckerberg’s vision of personal superintelligence. But the scale of the investment shows how seriously Meta is preparing for an AI future in which increasingly powerful models become part of everyday life.

Zuckerberg Wants AI in Everyone’s HandsZuckerberg’s argument is broader than simply making another chatbot available. His central concern is that if increasingly powerful AI is controlled by only a small number of institutions, it could concentrate too much power in too few hands.

Meta’s strategy is to distribute that technology through products used by billions of people.

That approach became more tangible Monday when Meta released Muse Glimmer, a smaller AI model designed to run on personal computers using a single graphics card. Zuckerberg also said a more advanced Muse Spark 1.2 model is coming soon.

Getting there will not be cheap.

Read Next

The $145 Billion QuestionMeta’s second-quarter revenue rose 28% to $60.8 billion, but operating expenses jumped 55%. Free cash flow — the cash left after running the business and paying for capital investments — fell to just $784 million, from $8.55 billion a year earlier. That doesn’t mean Meta is suddenly struggling financially. It ended June with $90.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. But the numbers show the financial cost of its AI push is already becoming significant.

Zuckerberg is effectively betting that today’s infrastructure spending will create tomorrow’s AI platform.

And Meta has an advantage that many AI rivals lack: distribution. Its Family of Apps reached 3.6 billion daily active people in June, giving Meta an enormous audience to which it can introduce AI products. That makes Zuckerberg’s argument about access more than a philosophical statement. It is also a business strategy.

Meta wants to build the models, spend heavily on the infrastructure behind them and put those models in front of billions of people. For META investors, the question is no longer whether Zuckerberg is willing to spend heavily on AI. He clearly is.

The bigger question is whether making superintelligence affordable can generate enough value to justify the extraordinary cost of building it.

But while Zuckerberg sees personal AI as a tool to boost careers, businesses, education and creative work, Meta’s own upheaval highlights the darker side of the AI boom: tech companies are increasingly cutting jobs as AI takes on work once done by employees.

In May, Meta laid off more than 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, underscoring how AI is reshaping the jobs it was supposed to help.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg is launching a new AI model and a vision for a more open form of superintelligence.

The social media giant unveiled Muse Glimmer on Monday and said it is an open-weight, agentic model small enough to run on a Mac or PC. Open-weight means users can download and customize the model to run it locally instead of in the cloud.

Meta also plans to release an open-weight version of Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model, soon, Zuckerberg added.

Meta said it trained Glimmer on Muse Spark using a process known as distillation, where a smaller model learns from a larger "teacher" model.

Meta said that Glimmer, the latest model rolled out by the company's Superintelligence division led by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, can perform complex reasoning and handle a broad range of agentic tasks while running on a consumer device with a single graphics card.

Glimmer can break a task, such as coding or admin work, into steps. Meta said it "performs strongly for its size class" on several benchmarks for large language models.

The Meta CEO also published a 6,500-word essay from Zuckerberg making a positive case for superintelligent AI.

In the essay, titled "The Future Is for Everyone," Zuckerberg wrote that it was "surprising" that the discourse from so many of the people developing AI was so "filled with doom."

The Meta CEO said it would be wrong to restrict access to superintelligent AI to a handful of individuals or companies on safety grounds.

"Some argue that superintelligence itself or a small set of experts who control it should decide what is best for humanity. We disagree," Zuckerberg wrote.

Meta's model launch comes as the tech industry is embroiled in a debate over open weight AI.

Last month, nearly every major AI lab — including Meta — signed a public letter advocating for open-weight models, after the US government suggested it could sanction Chinese open models that were found to have distilled AI models built by their US rivals.

"Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data," Zuckerberg wrote in his essay. "US policy must reduce this additional friction if we want American open source models to lead over time."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Meta Mark Zuckerberg AI More

Few fortunes move in straight lines, but Mark Zuckerberg's has been especially jumpy this summer. Twice in a matter of weeks, the value of his stake in Meta Platforms (META +0.19%) shifted by more than $18 billion in a single stretch, once soaring and once sinking. Those swings are not just billionaire trivia. They are a live readout of a debate splitting Wall Street over the company's enormous bet on artificial intelligence (AI).

Today's Change

(

0.19

%) $

1.13

Current Price

$

589.90

Two swings, one argument The first move was up. A blowout earnings report sent Meta's stock to record highs near $780 and added roughly $26.8 billion to Zuckerberg's net worth in a single day, as investors cheered surging revenue and his pitch to build "personal superintelligence" for everyone.

Image source: Getty Images.

The reversal came soon after. When Meta detailed just how much it plans to spend, guiding capital expenditures toward as much as $145 billion this year, up from around $72 billion in 2025, the mood flipped. The stock suffered its worst day of the year, and Zuckerberg's fortune dropped roughly $18 billion.

What changed was not the business but the price tag. Revenue is still climbing at a healthy clip, up 28% from a year earlier last quarter. But free cash flow, the money left over after all that investing, nearly vanished as spending on chips, servers, and data centers ballooned. Some investors see visionary empire-building. Others see a company pouring almost every dollar it earns into an unproven future.

To me, the whipsaw is the message. When a stock lurches this hard on spending plans rather than on sales, it means the market has reached no consensus on whether the AI build-out will pay off. That uncertainty cuts both ways. Zuckerberg has a history of costly bets that critics mocked before they worked, from Reels to mobile, and if his AI infrastructure sharpens ad targeting and powers new products, today's outlays could look like a bargain in hindsight. But there is no guarantee, and any returns may take years to appear, if they appear at all.

For investors, the takeaway is to stop watching the daily net-worth headlines and start deciding what you actually believe. Meta is no longer simply an advertising machine. It has become one of the largest AI-infrastructure bets in the market, and owning it now means accepting sharp swings and a long time horizon. If you trust that the spending will earn its keep, the volatility is just noise. If you do not, the collapsing free cash flow is a warning worth heeding. Either way, size the position for a bumpy ride.

A 3D-printed Meta logo is seen in this illustration taken July 20, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesAug 6 (Reuters) - A New Mexico state court ordered Meta (META.O), opens new tab on Thursday to pay $567 million and ​change how its platforms function for young users in the state ‌after finding the company is to blame for harming children's mental health.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid in Santa Fe ruled the company had created a public nuisance in New Mexico, siding with ​the state's Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat. Torrez had accused the ​social media company of designing its products to addict young users ⁠and failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms.

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Biedscheid ordered the ​company to impose a range of youth-safety measures, including monthly limits on teens' use ​of Facebook and Instagram, restrictions on notifications, tighter controls on adult contact with minors, safeguards for AI chatbots, and enhanced review of child sexual abuse reports, under a $567 million decree ​that will remain in place for five years.

Meta said it will appeal the ​ruling and that it has been working to identify and remove harmful content from its ‌platforms.

"We ⁠remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts," Meta said in a statement.

The ruling came in the second phase of New Mexico's lawsuit. A jury in March ​had found Meta ​violated the state’s ⁠consumer protection law by misrepresenting the safety of Facebook and Instagram for young users. It ordered the company to pay $375 ​million in damages.

Biedscheid heard three weeks of testimony during the ​second trial ⁠over the lawsuit, which did not involve a jury. It focused solely on whether Meta’s platforms created a “public nuisance” under New Mexico law.

The case is being closely ⁠watched as ​states, municipalities and school districts across the country ​pursue similar claims seeking to force changes at the industry level.

Reporting by Andrew Hay in New ​Mexico and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Christopher Cushing

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.

Avior Wealth Management LLC decreased its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 7.2% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 21,159 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,650 shares during the quarter. Avior Wealth Management LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $11,919,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $69,502,379,000 after buying an additional 105,154,977 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in shares of 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 worth $59,963,463,000 after buying an additional 4,395,763 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during 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 during the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during 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 during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 837 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Monday, July 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.85, for a total transaction of $508,770.45. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 6,290 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,823,376.50. The trade was a 11.74% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total transaction of $280,780.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. The trade was a 14.52% 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 sold a total of 38,270 shares of company stock valued at $23,314,831 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of Meta Platforms stock opened at $588.77 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $1.49 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.18, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $599.34 and a 200-day moving average price of $622.13. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a one year low of $520.26 and a one year high of $796.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). The company had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $7.14 EPS. Equities analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.84 EPS for the current year.

Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades META has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Robert W. Baird cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their target price on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Erste Group Bank raised shares of Meta Platforms from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 7th. Finally, Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.

Check Out Our Latest Report on META

Trending Headlines about Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Muse Code, a beta terminal-based AI coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2. The tool is designed to write and debug software and competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Meta says it will be priced below leading alternatives, potentially helping expand AI adoption and create a new revenue opportunity. Meta launches new AI coding tool powered by Muse Spark 1.2 Positive Sentiment: Phillip Securities upgraded META to “strong-buy,” providing an additional bullish signal as Meta expands its AI product lineup. Phillip Securities upgrades Meta Neutral Sentiment: Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares worth approximately $281,000 under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is less significant as a signal of management confidence, though his remaining ownership declined by about 14.5%. Meta insider trading filing Negative Sentiment: Meta’s Muse Spark AI model reportedly hacked another company during cybersecurity testing. While the incident occurred in a controlled test, it could increase scrutiny of Meta’s AI safety practices and raise reputational and regulatory concerns. Meta AI model hacked another company during testing Negative Sentiment: U.S. Senate legislation advancing online child-safety rules could increase Meta’s legal liability for harm to minors on its platforms. Separately, Meta apologized to Indian officials over content-moderation errors, including restrictions on a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding to international regulatory risk. Meta and Google online child safety rules Negative Sentiment: Meta is among several technology companies committed to approximately $1.09 trillion in future lease payments, largely for AI data centers. The spending supports long-term AI growth but heightens concerns about capital intensity, free cash flow and returns on investment. AI data-center lease burden for Big Tech 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.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms SpaceX: Love the Company, But the Stock Is a Harder Call Ulta’s Growth Is Real, But So Are the Risks BWX Technologies Is Turning the AI Power Problem Into a Nuclear Growth Story Meta’s Earnings Drop Shows Wall Street Wants More Than Ad Growth

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Meta Platforms Today

$584.02 -3.92 (-0.67%)

As of 02:05 PM Eastern

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

52-Week Range$520.26▼

$796.25Dividend Yield0.36%

P/E Ratio21.98

Price Target$785.32

Meta Platform’s NASDAQ: META Q2 earnings distinctly disappointed investors, as demonstrated by the stock’s 8% fall after the report.

Wall Street analysts did not react well to the report either, with many issuing substantial price target decreases afterward.

Get Meta Platforms alerts:

These decreases were also more significant compared to past earnings reports.

However, analysts have not abandoned this Magnificent Seven giant by any stretch of the imagination, with most still pointing to substantial upside going forward.

Meta’s Q2 Report: The Good, the Bad, and the UglyMeta managed to beat sales estimates in Q2, with revenue rising 28% year-over-year (YOY). Despite the beat, there were just a few positive aspects to Meta’s report outside of this.

Meta posted a steep earnings-per-share (EPS) miss, driven largely by legal issues that surfaced earlier in 2026, resulting in a multi-billion-dollar expense. To make matters even worse, the firm had to pay the piper for its recent layoffs, incurring over $1 billion in severance expenses that also put substantial downward pressure on EPS. Although adjusting for these expenses makes Meta’s EPS post look much less disappointing, these are still real costs to the company at the end of the day.

The company indicated that substantial legal expenses could persist in the future, noting that its youth-related legal issues could result in a material loss.

The negatives did not end there. The midpoint of Meta’s revenue guidance also came in below expectations, an outcome that is particularly unfavorable given the firm’s massive AI spending. Additionally, Meta beat sales estimates by the smallest margin among hyperscalers in Q2.

Meta continues to grow at an over 25% year-over-year clip, a strong rate for a company of its size. However, with such drastic AI spending helping drive this growth, markets are not likely to give the firm the benefit of the doubt when key metrics are not up to par. Analyst price targets indicate sell-siders may be reducing how much leeway they are willing to give Meta as well.

Meta Price Targets Take a Big HitThe MarketBeat consensus price target on Meta sits near $790, a figure that implies very significant upside potential of more than 30%. However, the picture looks less aggressive when measured against more recently updated analyst targets after the company’s report. Other current target averages sit closer to the mid-$700s, implying upside in the high-20% range rather than the low-30% range.

Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$785.32
32.39% Upside

Moderate Buy
Based on 47 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$593.20High Forecast$1,000.00Average Forecast$785.32Low Forecast$595.00Meta Platforms Stock Forecast Details

This comes as analysts pushed their targets down substantially after Meta’s report. The average price target, based on MarketBeat's historical data, decreased by more than 10%, marking a bigger decline than the shares themselves. Some of the most bullish analysts on Meta cut their price targets by over $100. This includes Rosenblatt and Susquehanna. Rosenblatt previously had a $1,015 target on Meta, but dropped this figure by 13% to $883. Susquehanna’s decrease was even more drastic, with its target falling by 28% from $900 to $650.

Analysts have often moved their price targets along a trajectory similar to Meta’s post-earnings price action. However, in many of these instances, price target movements have been relatively favorable, rising more when Meta gains and falling less when it drops.

It is noteworthy that the percentage decrease in targets was slightly greater than the actual decline shares observed. This indicates a greater deterioration in analyst sentiment after the report compared to past quarters. Still, analyst ratings provide some solace, with Meta having 39 Buy, eight Hold, and zero Sell ratings.

The Waiting Game for Non-Advertising Growth Catalysts ContinuesThe market holds Meta to a high standard, especially regarding growth, as its AI investments aim to provide growth tailwinds. At this point, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Meta to justify its AI spending based on advertising growth alone. The firm is in need of alternative catalysts in order to restore confidence among many investors.

The good news is that Meta is in the process of pulling growth levers, although many of these initiatives are in their early stages and have yet to yield actual results. This includes the potential pathway for selling its excess compute to third parties that are seeing strong demand for their AI services.

Additionally, Meta is working to monetize its Muse Spark 1.1 model, which was only released in July. This is the first time that Meta will try to directly monetize a model through token sales. Meta is expanding access to Muse Spark 1.1 through popular model distribution channels such as OpenRouter.

Lastly, Meta recently released subscription offerings that could drive meaningful growth if they gain significant adoption among Facebook and Instagram users.

There is still reason for optimism around Meta stock. However, investors should weigh the legal risk surrounding the company, and the risk that its non-ad growth may take a substantial amount of time to kick in.

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Should You Invest $1,000 in Meta Platforms Right Now?Before you consider Meta Platforms, you'll want to hear this.

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Executives from America's largest artificial intelligence companies arrive at the White House on Tuesday to see, for the first time, how the government intends to inspect their most powerful models before release.

The staff-level meeting is being convened by the Office of the National Cyber Director and is expected to draw representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google and Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB).

On the table is a framework, now complete, that sets out how officials will assess whether frontier models can find and exploit software vulnerabilities.

The summit emanated from an executive order by Donald Trump signed on 2 June, and participation is voluntary. The presidential edict explicitly bars the process from being turned into a licensing, permitting or preclearance regime.

That said, developers could hand the government access to qualifying models for up to 30 days before releasing them to other trusted partners.

The Treasury, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were told to build a classified benchmarking process for the tests.

Expect few of the details to become public. Both the benchmarking methodology and the capability threshold that determines which models get caught are classified, and will be shared with developers only as officials see fit.

The bigger questions companies want answered are definitional. The administration has not said how it will define a frontier model, whether open-weight systems that users can download and modify will be covered, or which arm of government will actually run the review.

No single official or office has been designated to handle outreach to the industry, though national cyber director Sean Cairncross, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick have been driving the initiative.

Firms with models already in the pipeline want to know quickly whether those releases will be subject to the new process.

The meeting follows a bruising few weeks for relations between Washington and the labs.

Export controls briefly curtailed Anthropic's release of Fable 5, and the administration later asked OpenAI to stagger the rollout of GPT-5.6 to a limited set of government-approved partners.

The security case has meanwhile been made for the government by the industry's own disclosures.

OpenAI revealed last month that an experimental agent escaped its restricted testing environment and compromised Hugging Face's systems while hunting for answers to a cybersecurity evaluation.

Anthropic withheld Mythos, a model capable of unearthing software vulnerabilities, from public release.

On 28 July, more than 1,100 employees of the four companies signed an open letter titled Pacing the Frontier, asking Washington to help build international tools for slowing frontier development if it outruns human oversight.

OpenAI and Anthropic endorsed it as companies within a day.

Have you looked into how Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) performed internationally during the quarter ending June 2026? Considering the widespread global presence of this social media company, examining the trends in international revenues is essential for assessing its financial resilience and prospects for growth.

In the current era of a tightly interconnected global economy, the proficiency of a company to penetrate international markets significantly influences its financial health and trajectory of growth. For investors, the key is to grasp how reliant a company is on overseas markets, as this provides insights into the durability of its earnings, its ability to exploit different economic cycles, and its overall growth capabilities.

Being present in international markets serves as a counterbalance to domestic economic challenges while offering chances to engage with more rapidly evolving economies. However, this kind of diversification introduces challenges like currency fluctuations, geopolitical uncertainties and varying market trends.

While analyzing META's performance for the last quarter, we found some intriguing trends in revenues from its overseas segments that Wall Street analysts commonly model and monitor.

The company's total revenue for the quarter amounted to $60.8 billion, marking an increase of 28% from the year-ago quarter. We will next turn our attention to dissecting META's international revenue to get a clearer picture of how significant its operations are outside its main base.

A Look into META's International Revenue StreamsOf the total revenue, $14.01 billion came from Europe during the last fiscal quarter, accounting for 23%. This represented a surprise of -1.65% as analysts had expected the region to contribute $14.24 billion to the total revenue. In comparison, the region contributed $13.24 billion, or 23.5%, and $11.13 billion, or 23.4%, to total revenue in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.

During the quarter, Asia-Pacific contributed $16.07 billion in revenue, making up 26.4% of the total revenue. When compared to the consensus estimate of $16.07 billion, this meant a surprise of +0%. Looking back, Asia-Pacific contributed $15.45 billion, or 27.4%, in the previous quarter, and $12.86 billion, or 27.1%, in the same quarter of the previous year.

Rest of the world generated $6.86 billion in revenues for the company in the last quarter, constituting 11.3% of the total. This represented a surprise of -4.41% compared to the $7.17 billion projected by Wall Street analysts. Comparatively, in the previous quarter, Rest of the world accounted for $6.36 billion (11.3%), and in the year-ago quarter, it contributed $5.08 billion (10.7%) to the total revenue.

Anticipated Revenues in Overseas MarketsIt is projected by analysts on Wall Street that Meta Platforms will post revenues of $62.85 billion for the ongoing fiscal quarter, an increase of 22.7% from the year-ago quarter. The expected contributions from Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the world to this revenue are 23.2%, 26.9%, and 11.8%, translating into $14.57 billion, $16.88 billion, and $7.44 billion, respectively.

For the entire year, the company's total revenue is forecasted to be $253.71 billion, which is an improvement of 26.3% from the previous year. The revenue contributions from different regions are expected as follows: Europe will contribute 23.5% ($59.73 billion), Asia-Pacific 26.1% ($66.12 billion) and Rest of the world 11.6% ($29.44 billion) to the total revenue.

Concluding RemarksMeta Platforms' reliance on international markets for revenues offers both opportunities and risks. Hence, keeping an eye on its international revenue trends could significantly help forecast the company's prospects.

In an era of growing international interdependencies and escalating geopolitical disputes, Wall Street analysts are vigilant in tracking these trends for businesses with a global reach, in order to refine their predictions of earnings. It should be noted, however, that a multitude of other elements, such as a company's domestic position, also play a significant role in shaping the earnings forecasts.

We at Zacks strongly focus on the dynamic earnings forecast of companies, given that empirical studies have demonstrated its potent impact on the immediate price movement of stocks. Invariably, there's a positive relationship -- upward earnings predictions often result in an increase in stock prices.

The Zacks Rank, our proprietary stock rating tool, comes with an externally validated impressive track record. It effectively utilizes shifts in earnings projections to act as a dependable barometer for forecasting short-term stock price trends.

Meta Platforms currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .

Examining the Latest Trends in Meta Platforms' Stock ValueThe stock has witnessed a decline of 4.5% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's an increase of 0.2%. In the same interval, the Zacks Computer and Technology sector, to which Meta Platforms belongs, has registered a decrease of 5.8%. Over the past three months, the company's shares saw a decrease of 8.7%, while the S&P 500 increased by 4.2%. In comparison, the sector experienced an increase of 1.6% during this timeframe.

Meta Platforms (META +3.28%) released its second-quarter earnings report on July 29. The company's financial results weren't bad, at least as long as we stop at the top line. Meta's revenue grew by 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. But the tech leader's earnings per share dropped 13% year over year to $6.18, while its free cash flow came in at $784 million, down almost 91% from the year-ago period.

Meta Platforms is pouring a small fortune into its artificial intelligence (AI)-related ambitions, and it is impacting its margins and bottom line. It's no wonder that many people are running for the exit. However, recent comments from Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, should give investors some confidence that the company might eventually reap the benefits of these investments.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Meta Platforms' cloud business is in the works There have been reports in recent weeks suggesting that Meta Platforms is planning to rent out excess AI computing capacity to other data centers. Although it seems like a promising business endeavor, investors naturally had many questions. Here is just one of them: Can Meta Platforms successfully join the crowded cloud computing market and actually challenge the leaders in the niche, including the likes of Amazon (AMZN +15.32%), Microsoft (MSFT +3.02%), and Alphabet (GOOG +6.88%) (GOOGL +6.73%)? During the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, Zuckerberg addressed this concern, at least to some extent. Talking about the opportunity to sell computing capacity, he said:

We're getting a lot of offers for compute at a significant premium over what we paid for it.

These aren't unsubstantiated claims either. Meta Platforms is reportedly in early talks to rent out AI computing power to Anthropic, a privately held company and a leader in developing large language models. The deal is far from done, but the fact that it is in the works at all tells us something: Meta Platforms is exploring launching a cloud computing business because it sees demand for the kinds of services it hopes to provide.

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If the company can move forward with these plans, it may help justify the significant investments it is making in AI. This business could be a powerful growth driver over the medium term. According to some estimates, AI infrastructure spending will exceed $1 trillion by 2029, up from just $318 billion last year. Some of this spending will flow right into the kinds of services Meta Platforms wants to offer.

What does all this mean for the stock? Meta's core advertising business remains strong and continues to improve thanks to AI. The company also boasts a deep ecosystem, with 3.60 billion daily active users across its websites and apps, providing significant monetization opportunities. The tech giant's proposed cloud business could further boost sales and accelerate earnings growth. Since much of the investment has already been made, it would almost certainly lift the company's margins. This new growth opportunity is another reason investors should consider buying the stock on the dip.

Prosper Junior Bakiny has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Mark Mahaney, an Evercore analyst, called Meta Platforms (META +3.28%) his top large-cap long idea on July 22. He believes advertising demand and ad improvements driven by artificial intelligence (AI) will drive continued revenue growth, and that the company is undervalued currently.

One week later, Meta released an underwhelming earnings report, and its share price dropped about 10% in a single day. Mahaney reiterated that he expects the stock to outperform, but he lowered his price target from $930 to $820.

Is the social media giant an undervalued megacap or a value trap? Let's take a closer look at why Mahaney likes it and whether his thesis still holds.

Image source: Getty Images.

Meta looks like a bargain At a glance, Meta stock has a lot to offer. Its social media platforms averaged 3.6 billion daily active users across its brands in June 2026, one of the largest user bases among tech companies.

Despite its entrenched position, it's still delivering double-digit growth. Revenue was up 28% year over year to $60.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026, and ad impressions increased 14% year over year.

The growth is there, it has a dominant market position, and it trades at just 20 times trailing earnings and 17 times forward earnings. By those metrics, it's the second-cheapest stock among the "Magnificent Seven" tech companies, with Alphabet the only one trading at lower multiples. However, the highlights don't tell the whole story.

Why investors are worried The primary concern with Meta is its huge AI spending. The company's costs and expenses jumped 55% year over year to $42 billion in the second quarter, contributing to its failure to meet earnings estimates. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $6.18, a 13% year-over-year decrease, compared to analyst expectations of $7.14.

Meta also slightly raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $130 billion and $145 billion. The previous low end of the estimate was $125 billion. It's a minor adjustment in the grand scheme of things, but it does send a message that AI spending isn't slowing down.

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Management, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, hasn't provided much concrete information on the progress of its frontier AI models, either. The company has delayed multiple AI rollouts, including its Avocado system and Muse Spark model.

The concerns are valid, but so is the growth case The company's AI spending is somewhat worrisome, especially given its model delays and the fact that it doesn't currently have a business to sell its computing capacity to, unlike the other hyperscalers investing heavily in AI. But the revenue growth rate is impressive for such a large company, and AI has reportedly already been driving higher ad impressions and more revenue per ad.

With that in mind, the current price could be a good buying opportunity. Wall Street analysts overwhelmingly see it as a buy, with a median one-year price target of $800, close to Mahaney's own forecast. While Meta will likely remain volatile, the strength of its business gives it substantial upside.

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

SummaryCompaniesPolice preparing to send notice to MetaCase follows India's tightening of content rulesIndia is Facebook's biggest market by usersNEW DELHI, July 31 (Reuters) - Police in the southern Indian city of ​Hyderabad have registered a case against the head of Meta India, Arun Srinivas, over multiple videos ‌posted on the company's Facebook platform that depicted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an "abusive manner," a senior police officer said on Friday.

The videos spread as Modi contended with the biggest wave of youth-led protests India has seen in more than a decade, a movement ​over leaked papers in national examinations that has led to the resignation of his education minister.

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Police are ​preparing to send a notice to Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab regarding the case, said V Aravind ⁠Babu, deputy commissioner of police for cyber crimes in Hyderabad.

Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request ​for comment on Friday.

It was not immediately clear why Srinivas had been named personally, a rare move against a ​senior executive of a global tech firm. India has tightened its content rules this year, narrowing the legal shield that protects platforms from liability for what their users post and raising the exposure of the executives who run them.

Since February, platforms must remove ​unlawful content flagged by courts or the government within three hours, down from 36, or lose that protection.

Holding someone ​personally responsible normally requires proof of "an active role and knowledge," said Akash Karmakar, a technology law partner at Indian law firm ‌Panag & Babu.

Meta ⁠has repeatedly drawn the ire of Indian government over content posted by its users, and faced criticism that it does too little to police hate speech and misinformation on Facebook and Instagram.

FACEBOOK'S BIGGEST MARKET BY USERSThe case builds on a run of tensions between Meta and Modi's government over content tied to the prime minister. Modi has ​faced a barrage of online ​criticism, jokes and ridicule ⁠by protesters in recent weeks.

India's IT ministry summoned Meta executives this week after Facebook briefly restricted a Modi post, with a top official saying the government wanted the company ​to explain the matter at the highest level.

A Meta spokesperson said at the time ​that the ⁠post, which was Modi's first where he addressed the massive student protests, had been blocked inadvertently.

India is Facebook's biggest market by users. Srinivas is Meta's managing director and head for India since July 2025.

The case against him is among many others ⁠that ​were filed based on complaints by supporters of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, ​who alleged that manipulated videos and images of the prime minister were being circulated on Meta-owned social media platforms, such as Facebook and ​Instagram, local media reported earlier.

Reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Writing by Hritam Mukherjee; Editing by Tom Hogue and Raju Gopalakrishnan

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

Based in Bengaluru, Munsif Vengattil leads Reuters' technology news coverage in India. He tracks themes at the intersection of tech, business, and labor. A reporter for nine years, Munsif has written extensively on India's electronics manufacturing aspirations and its tech policy space, AI and election interference, satellite internet, streaming wars, and data breaches. His stories also focus on investigating corporate strategies and revealing India-specific initiatives and challenges of the biggest of tech firms - from Apple, Facebook, and Google, to Foxconn, Samsung, and Nvidia.

Meta Wants AI To Become Instagram’s Third Content FeedToday, Instagram primarily surfaces content from two places: people users follow and creators they may not. Zuckerberg said AI is about to add an entirely new category.

“There are already two large sets of content to draw from — first from your friends and the people you follow, and second from creators that you don’t follow — but now there is going to be a whole new and nearly infinite universe of personalized content,” Zuckerberg said.

He said Meta’s newly launched Muse Image and Muse Video models will power that shift by generating highly personalized content tailored to individual users.

“This is going to make our services a lot more useful and engaging for people,” Zuckerberg added.

AI Is Already Reshaping InstagramMeta’s AI push is already producing measurable results across Instagram and Facebook.

The company said large language models are improving recommendation systems by developing a deeper understanding of both content and user intent, allowing Meta to surface more relevant posts and videos. On Instagram, global time spent grew at a double-digit rate during the quarter, driven largely by improvements to Feed and Reels recommendations.

Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, also revealed that every public Reels and Feed post on Instagram is now automatically processed through a large language model that analyzes everything from topics to tone before feeding those signals into recommendation and ranking systems.

The company also rolled out its largest-ever Reels ranking upgrade, which drove a 15-basis-point increase in Instagram sessions. Meanwhile, more than half of all recommended content in Instagram Feed is now less than one day old—more than double the level seen a year ago.

Why It Matters For InvestorsMeta has spent years relying on creators and user-generated content to drive engagement. Zuckerberg’s latest comments suggest the company now sees AI-generated content as another long-term growth engine.

If AI can continuously generate personalized images, videos and other media that users find engaging, it could significantly expand the amount of content available on Instagram while keeping people on the platform longer—creating more opportunities to serve advertisements.

The strategy also extends beyond content recommendations. Zuckerberg said AI is already improving ad targeting, creative tools and business performance, reinforcing Meta’s broader view that artificial intelligence will become a core driver of future engagement and monetization across its apps.

Image via Shutterstock

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images Meta has more than a quarter trillion dollars in future lease obligations — largely tied to AI data centers — as the tech giant races to build out its artificial intelligence infrastructure, a new regulatory filing shows.

In its quarterly securities filing released a day after its earnings report, Meta said it had approximately $278.99 billion in operating and finance leases that have not yet begun and were not yet included on its balance sheet.

The lease agreements cover "data centers, colocations, and certain network infrastructure" and were scheduled to begin between the remainder of the year through 2036, Meta said in the filing. The lease terms range from more than one year to 30 years.

The nearly $279 billion figure represents a roughly 53% jump from the $182.88 billion in future lease obligations Meta reported in its first-quarter filings three months earlier.

Meta said in its latest securities filing that in July, after the quarter ended, it entered into additional data center leases with commitments of about $68 billion. Those leases are expected to begin in 2027 and 2028 with lease terms of 18 to 20 years, the company said.

The disclosures offer another glimpse into the extraordinary scale of Meta's AI infrastructure push.

Earlier this month, the owner of Facebook and Instagram announced plans to expand what was already expected to be its largest AI data center. Meta said that the Louisiana data center, known as Hyperion, will grow to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, bringing the project's anticipated cost to more than $50 billion.

On Meta's second-quarter earnings call Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a "significant portion" of the company's computing capacity will be used to train its AI models, power AI agents, and support its core business. Zuckerberg added that Meta also expects to "grow a large business serving large customers as well."

Separate from its future lease obligations, Meta reported $349.31 billion in non-cancelable contractual commitments comprising both short-term and long-term arrangements.

"These commitments mostly relate to third-party cloud capacity arrangements and investments in servers and network infrastructure, data centers, and consumer hardware products in Reality Labs, with approximately $53.52 billion and $81.65 billion due in 2026 and 2027, respectively," Meta said in its filing.

Meta also said it has contingent obligations to purchase up to $14.72 billion of cloud capacity over the next five years. Those commitments "may be reduced if the cloud service provider is able to sell such capacity to other customers," Meta said.

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

Natalie is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Business News team.She was previously on BI's Legal Affairs team where she covered major cases out of state and federal court, as well as bankruptcy. Her coverage often focused on stories at the intersection of law, business, politics and technology. Natalie has covered Donald Trump’s criminal and civil cases, the wave of lawsuits against the second Trump administration, the indictment and criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the legal battles facing Elon Musk and his companies. Natalie came to Business Insider in June 2021 as a breaking news reporter, focusing on the most interesting angles around the trending news of the day. Natalie largely drove BI’s coverage around the fatal “Rust” shooting involving Alec Baldwin and the disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito.Prior to joining BI, Natalie worked for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and The Brooklyn Paper. She has an extensive background covering crime and courts. During her more than 12-year journalism career, she did a stint covering the police beat out of the headquarters for the New York Police Department. Natalie, a Brooklyn native, graduated from Brooklyn College in 2012 with a journalism degree. Popular articles

Walmart and Amazon face legal trouble for using a points system to track and fire employees over absences: lawyersCelebrities who partied with Diddy may want to contact their lawyersAn unchecked AI could usher in a new dark ageAt Diddy's A-list 'white parties,' naked women were a staple — but that didn't seem to raise eyebrows at the timeThe illegal maneuvers the rich use to get richerOwner of ship that crashed into Baltimore bridge will likely try to invoke 1851 law used to cap damages after Titanic disaster AI Data Centers Meta More Mark Zuckerberg

By PYMNTS  |  July 29, 2026

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A day after blasting OpenAI and Anthropic for hoarding information, the drama surrounding Meta’s Q2 earnings call centered around how he would follow up. Listeners didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

“It’s extremely unlikely, if you look out five years from now, that you don’t have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s second quarter earnings call Wednesday (July 29), describing software “working on your behalf 24/7” across health, finances, relationships and careers.

That vision, for every one of Meta’s 3.6 billion daily users to have an assistant that never clocks out dominated Meta’s earnings call. Zuckerberg spent his opening remarks describing a future where personal agents handle everything from health to finances, and the rest of the call built directly on that premise: how Meta pays for it, what stands in the way, and why the company believes it will win anyway.

The vision runs into a hard constraint almost immediately: supply. “There’s just nowhere near enough compute for all the demand,” Zuckerberg said, explaining that Meta is fielding offers to sell its own capacity at a premium but prefers to build intelligence on top of it instead, where the margins run higher.

That scarcity is why Meta is racing to stand up the agent layer now, even in pieces. Meta Superintelligence Labs shipped its Muse Spark 1.1 and Muse Image models this quarter, and daily interactions with the Meta AI assistant have climbed sharply since it’s rebuild. Business agents are already live for more than a million businesses on WhatsApp and Messenger, handling customer inquiries and completed sales without a person in the loop.

Zuckerberg pointed to Brazilian rental company Movida as the model he wants to replicate: a WhatsApp agent that runs the entire booking flow start to finish, resolving the vast majority of conversations without human help. That is the pattern Meta is betting will scale to billions of people next.

Zuckerberg’s Case for Why Meta Wins the AI Bet Scarce compute raises an obvious question: Why should Meta, rather than a rival, end up owning this? Zuckerberg’s answer rests on distribution and the flywheel it creates. “When we have a product and a format that works, I would go as far as to say that I think we’re probably the best company in the world at scaling those experiences to billions of people,” he said, describing how usage data feeds back into the models that improve the products.

He did not pretend the wager was small. “I get that this is a big investment and it’s a big bet,” Zuckerberg said. “My personal bet is that the people who invest in this are going to be rewarded and feel very good over time.”

That confidence is the thesis the entire call built toward: an ad business strong enough to fund an all-in push into personal agents, aimed at a future Zuckerberg is convinced is coming regardless of who builds it.

What Else Stood Out Meta hired Kunal Shah, founder of Indian payments company CRED, as its new head of WhatsApp. Zuckerberg said Shah built one of India’s largest payment companies. Instagram reached 2 billion daily active users. Threads crossed 500 million monthly actives, which Zuckerberg called the fastest-growing conversation app ever. WhatsApp peaked at 30 million messages sent per second during the World Cup final, an all-time record for the platform. AI-driven ranking improvements increased ad clicks and conversions across Meta’s platforms. Advantage+ automated campaigns continue to scale as a core part of ad delivery Meta launched Meta One, a new subscription offering more tools and AI features across its apps, with plans to add further tiers and pricing options Zuckerberg revealed that every public Reels and Feed post on Instagram is now automatically run through an LLM and analyzed across dimensions like topic and tone, a milestone the company hit this year. Topline Growth and Future Outlook Meta reported total revenue of $60.8 billion for the quarter, up 28% year over year, with advertising revenue of $59.4 billion, up 27%. Ad impressions grew 14% and the average price per ad rose 12%. Family of apps other revenue crossed $1 billion for the first time, up 73%.

Capital expenditures for the quarter reached $31.1 billion, while free cash flow came in at $784 million. Meta ended the quarter with $90.3 billion in cash and marketable securities against $83.7 billion in debt, and headcount stood at roughly 75,000, down 3%, reflecting about 8,000 employees affected by May’s reduction.

Looking ahead, Meta guided to third-quarter 2026 revenue of $61 billion to $64 billion, full-year 2026 expenses of $165 billion to $169 billion, and full-year 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion, with the floor raised from its prior outlook.

The company did not provide specific guidance for 2027 capex.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that global time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images If you can't seem to get off your Instagram scroll, it is not an accident.

During Meta's second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that global time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter, "largely driven by improvements to our feed and Reels recommendations."

"Our recommendations are also becoming more personalized, surfacing more fresh content while giving people more direct control over what they see," Zuckerberg said, adding that Instagram reels combined "faster inference with a new architecture that draws on deeper user history to improve predictions."

"This drove a 15 basis point increase in sessions on Instagram, with particular strength in reshares and time spent, which are both strong indicators of better content-to-user matching," Zuckerberg added.

According to Zuckerberg, recommendations are trained through automatically feeding every public Reel and post on Instagram to an LLM and analyzing them for topics and tone, which he called "a key building block toward greater personalization."

"And we're working towards including more surfaces on Facebook as well," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg's comments came weeks after the company launched Muse Image in early July, which lets users create AI-generated images from photos on public Instagram accounts of people over 18. By default, eligible public accounts were included without prior notice, triggering a privacy backlash that led to the generation function being shut down in less than a week.

Users could prevent Meta's AI from accessing visual content by going to Instagram's Settings, opening the Share and Reuse section, and switching off the option that lets Meta access photos and videos. There was no such option for text, comments, or audio.

The algorithms have been central to multiple lawsuits filed by more than two dozen states that alleged that Meta designed its products to be addictive to teenagers and children.

During the call, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company expects continued "scrutiny on youth-related issues in several markets" and has "a number of youth-related trials scheduled for this year," which could result in financial losses. The company reported $2.40 billion of charges "related to legal proceedings."

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

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

Instagram Meta AI More Social Media Big Tech

Meta Platforms reported a precipitous 91% drop in second-quarter free cash flow on Wednesday, underscoring the financial strain of the social media giant’s costly AI buildout despite an uncertain payoff.

The Facebook parent company reported free cash flow of $784 million in the second quarter ended June 30, down from $8.55 billion reported a year earlier, sending its shares down 10% in extended trading.

Meta’s cash flow wipeout echoed Alphabet’s, which last week said it was cash flow negative for the first time ever as it spent $5.9 billion in the second quarter. The rate of spending stunned even the most bullish of Wall Street investors, driving Alphabet’s stock down.

mark Zuckerberg’s Meta reported free cash flow of $784 million in the second quarter, down from $8.55 billion reported a year earlier, sending its shares down 10% in extended trading. Getty Images Meta’s revenue jumped 28% to $60.8 billion in the quarter, the quickest pace of growth since the fourth quarter of 2021, barring the first quarter of 2026.

“We expect that a significant portion of our compute is going to go towards training our models, growing our core business and delivering personal agents and new products, but we also expect to grow a large business serving large customers as well,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call.

Meta currently has 32 data centers across the globe in operation or under construction, with 28 of them in the US.

The company also raised the lower end of its capital expenditure outlook. It now expects 2026 capital expenditure to be between $130 billion and $145 billion, compared with its prior forecast of $125 billion to $145 billion. At the beginning of the year it had forecast capex between $115 billion and $135 billion.

Meta now expects 2026 capital expenditure to be between $130 billion and $145 billion, compared with its prior forecast of $125 billion to $145 billion. A $10 billion data center complex under construction in El Paso, Texas. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect The feverish spending by Big Tech is expected to reach well above $700 billion this year, primarily on AI, while Morgan Stanley has pegged the estimated spend at more than $1 trillion for the next year.

“Meta’s report echoes what we saw from Alphabet and Tesla last week: strong revenue growth, but even faster growth in spending. The market is repricing a deteriorating free cash flow outlook, and in an environment of higher capital costs, that does not sit well,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com.

. Construction on a $1 billion 520-acre Meta data center in Beaver Dam, Wisc. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect Luke Stillman, a managing director at research firm Madison and Wall, said: “Meta’s underlying ad business that’s financing everything though is still performing well and is our main focus.”

Meta’s legal troubles While investors are scrutinizing Meta’s AI spending, it faces legal risks related to its core business. The company said in a court filing this month that four states were seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties over accusations it designed its Facebook ‌and Instagram platforms to addict young users and misled the public about their safety.

Meta had warned in April that legal and regulatory blowback in the European Union and the US over youth social media issues “could significantly impact” its business and financial results.

Meta had warned in April that legal and regulatory blowback in the European Union and the US over youth social media issues “could significantly impact” its business and financial results. The company said on Wednesday that it continued to see this scrutiny.

On the call, Meta CFO Susan Li said second-quarter operating income would have increased 9% year over year without the company’s legal charges and severance expenses. Operating income actually fell 8%.

“We continue to see scrutiny on youth-related issues in several markets and have a number of youth-related trials scheduled for this year in the US, which may ultimately result in a material loss,” she said in the company’s earnings statement.

Meta's Reality Labs unit, which develops virtual reality devices and wearables powered by AI, lost $4.62 billion in the latest quarter.

In its second-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, Meta said Reality Labs generated revenue of $431 million, up from $370 million a year earlier, while its operating loss widened from $4.53 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting a second-quarter loss of $5.07 billion on revenue of $423.4 million.

Reality Labs builds the Quest-branded VR headsets and Ray-Ban Meta glasses. The division has generated over $80 billion in total operating losses since late 2020.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook's name to Meta in 2021, underscoring his bet that people would live, work and play in digital worlds. However, the VR market failed to catch on with consumers, resulting in Meta refocusing Reality Labs to devices like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses it develops with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.

WATCH: Microsoft and Meta set to report earnings after the bell.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) is expected to post second-quarter results above Wall Street expectations, with analysts pointing to healthy advertising demand and early returns from artificial intelligence investment even as investors press the company for clearer evidence its AI spending will pay off.

Bank of America expects Meta to report revenue of $60.6 billion and earnings per share of $7.50, above consensus of $60.2 billion and $7.18, citing healthy ad growth and potential upside from May's workforce reductions. Investors are expected to focus on AI initiatives during the call, including advertising improvements tied to AI model integration, Muse Spark, and potential external compute sales.

For the third quarter, the bank expects Meta to guide revenue to $60.5 billion to $63.5 billion, roughly 18% to 24% growth year over year.

On costs, analysts said Meta could trim the top end of its expense guidance by $1 billion to $2 billion following the layoffs, while potentially raising its capital expenditure outlook to $135 billion to $150 billion, up from $125 billion to $145 billion, on higher memory costs.

Bank of America also raised its 2027 revenue estimate by $5 billion on potential AI capacity benefits following reports of a possible compute deal with Anthropic, now projecting $316 billion in 2027 revenue and $35.00 in earnings per share.

The results arrive amid broader investor unease over AI spending across Big Tech. Wedbush Securities said investors are focused on whether heavy AI infrastructure investment will translate into stronger revenue growth, rather than questioning the long-term outlook.

"We are going through another 'gut check' few weeks ahead for the tech trade as tech investors await a very important Q2 earnings season in July to further validate the AI Revolution buildout," Wedbush wrote, adding that Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Oracle and Palantir have all come under pressure as investors question when elevated capex will generate returns. The firm called it an "air pocket stage," with roughly $700 billion in Big Tech capex this year fueling the buildout ahead of broader enterprise adoption.

Bank of America separately noted Meta shares have fallen roughly 24% since its third-quarter 2025 call, when the company guided to a step-up in 2026 spending, versus a 5% gain for the Nasdaq. The bank said Meta's compute demand is structural, with AI already improving ad targeting, though the market remains uncertain how quickly newer bets like subscriptions and business agents will monetize. Analysts expect more clarity over the next two earnings cycles.

Meta reports second-quarter results after markets close tonight.

Meta Platforms (META -0.06%) has underperformed broader equities over the past year. One of the most important reasons why is that although it has ramped up spending to capitalize on what it perceives as a large opportunity in artificial intelligence (AI), the market doesn't see it that way. Meta's increased spending could lead to lower profits and margins if it doesn't achieve the return on investment it expects, the argument goes. However, Meta Platforms' CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, remains unapologetically bullish on AI. Under his leadership, the company is reportedly working on a deal that could justify the billions it is pouring into the technology.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Meta's new business venture is slowly taking shape Several weeks ago, reports surfaced suggesting that Meta Platforms was planning to launch a cloud business. The company is apparently looking to rent out excess AI computing capacity to other corporations. Now, Meta is reportedly in early talks to do exactly that with Anthropic, a leading AI company, although the deal is far from done and could still fall through. Anthropic builds large language models (LLMs) and is the corporation behind Claude, a family of LLMs that are arguably among the best on the market. Meta could sign a two-year, $10 billion deal to rent excess AI capacity to Anthropic.

The social media specialist generated about $200 billion in sales last year; an extra $5 billion per year may not move the needle. However, if Meta does secure this deal, it might only be the first of many. Anthropic isn't a small client, and it has historically relied on Amazon (AMZN -0.19%), the industry leader, for its cloud computing needs. Securing a client like this will be a great way for Meta Platforms to enter the cloud market. As analysts project rapid expansion in AI infrastructure spending over the next several years, Meta could sign similar deals with other big names and turn its cloud computing business into a meaningful growth driver.

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Is Meta Platforms stock a buy? Meta Platforms' financial results remain strong. The company has improved its core advertising business thanks to AI. Sophisticated recommendation algorithms have helped increase engagement across its websites and apps, while the company has also made it much easier for advertisers to launch ad campaigns. So far, Zuckerberg's optimism has borne fruit, and while some investors worry the AI tailwind will end, there are strong reasons to believe otherwise.

With more than three billion daily active users, Meta Platforms may only be in the early innings of its efforts to monetize AI. In the future, the company could make money from several initiatives, including subscriptions, AI agents for businesses and customers on WhatsApp, among many other monetization schemes the company could launch. Meta Platforms is still fine-tuning its cloud computing business, but its core operations are already strong, and this new opportunity may be the icing on the cake. That's why Meta Platforms' shares are worth buying on the dip.

Key Takeaways Meta Platforms' Q2 ad revenues are estimated at $59.035B, up 26.8% year over year.AI ad systems improved conversions, while generative tools helped advertisers boost campaign returns.Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp gained from AI recommendations, translation, messaging and wider ad reach. Meta Platforms’ (META - Free Report) second-quarter 2026 results, set to be reported on July 29, are expected to reflect the benefits of higher advertising revenues, driven by sustained growth in user engagement and ad impressions across its Family of Apps. In the first quarter of 2026, ad impressions increased 19% year over year, supported by user growth, stronger engagement and ad-load optimization. The average price per ad also rose 12%, reflecting improved ad performance, healthier advertiser demand and favorable currency movements.

AI-driven improvements to Meta’s advertising systems are likely to have remained a major growth catalyst in the to-be-reported quarter. Enhancements to the Lattice and GEM models drove a more than 6% improvement in conversion rates for landing-page-view ads, while the Adaptive Ranking Model generated a 1.6% conversion-rate increase across major Facebook and Instagram surfaces. Better ad selection and targeting likely encouraged advertisers to increase spending by improving campaign returns. Increasing adoption of Meta’s generative-AI advertising tools is also expected to have aided second-quarter performance.

The Meta AI business assistant, AI connectors and value-optimization tools are also helping advertisers create content, resolve account issues and improve return on ad spending. Meta is further optimizing when, where and to whom ads are displayed rather than depending only on higher ad loads. Ad-load increases on Instagram Feed and Reels contributed to first-quarter impression growth, although user and engagement gains remained the larger driver. The company’s measured approach to placing ads at more relevant moments is likely to have supported incremental conversions without materially weakening the user experience in the second quarter.

These trends are likely to have continued supporting advertising revenues in the to-be-reported quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Meta’s second-quarter advertising revenues is pegged at $59.035 billion, indicating growth of 26.8% year over year. Click here to learn how Meta’s overall second-quarter performance is likely to be.

META’s AI Push to Aid Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp in Q2Instagram is expected to have benefited significantly from AI-powered recommendation and content-understanding improvements. Ranking enhancements drove a 10% increase in Reels time spent in the first quarter of 2026. Meta doubled the length of user-interaction sequences used to train Instagram models and improved the richness of the data describing each interaction, allowing its systems to better understand users’ interests. Faster indexing and improved content recognition also increased the freshness and diversity of recommendations, with same-day posts accounting for more than 30% of recommended Reels.

AI translation and dubbing are likely to have further expanded Instagram’s content inventory and engagement. More than half a billion users on each of Facebook and Instagram were watching AI-translated videos weekly. Meta’s policy of allowing creators’ videos to reach viewers across different languages and regions means these capabilities are likely to have increased watch time, improved content discovery and created additional advertising opportunities on Instagram during the to-be-reported quarter.

Threads is expected to have benefited from improvements in AI-powered content recommendations, particularly around timeliness, relevance and cultural trends. The platform had more than 150 million daily active users, while Meta continued investing in creator partnerships and priority topics such as sports, entertainment and K-pop. Ads were expanded to more than 200 countries, and improved recommendations are likely to have strengthened user engagement and advertising inventory, although Threads is not expected to be a meaningful contributor to Meta’s overall revenues in 2026.

WhatsApp’s prospects are likely to have benefited from Meta’s AI push through business messaging, Business AIs and the gradual rollout of Status ads. Business AIs were facilitating more than 10 million conversations per week, up from 1 million at the beginning of the year, helping small businesses answer customer questions and engage potential buyers.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Meta’s second-quarter Family of Apps revenues is pegged at $59.605 billion, indicating growth of 26.4% year over year.

Zacks Rank & Upcoming Earnings to WatchMeta currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Reddit (RDDT - Free Report) , Arrow Electronics (ARW - Free Report) , and HubSpot (HUBS - Free Report) are some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector. Each of the three stocks sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Reddit, Arrow Electronics and HubSpot are expected to report their quarterly results on July 30, Aug. 6, and Aug. 5, respectively. Shares of Reddit and HubSpot have dropped 22.1% and 44.5%, respectively, while Arrow Electronics has jumped 93.5% year to date.