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English Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm acquired 13,857 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,806,000. Meta Platforms accounts for about 3.5% of English Capital Management LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 9th biggest position.

A number of other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Fox Run Management L.L.C. raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 6.9% during the second quarter. Fox Run Management L.L.C. now owns 2,179 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,227,000 after buying an additional 141 shares during the last quarter. Titan Global Capital Management USA LLC lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 0.5% in the 2nd quarter. Titan Global Capital Management USA LLC now owns 41,818 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $23,556,000 after acquiring an additional 192 shares in the last quarter. Mindset Wealth Management LLC raised its position in Meta Platforms by 135.3% in the 2nd quarter. Mindset Wealth Management LLC now owns 12,714 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $7,162,000 after buying an additional 7,311 shares during the last quarter. Nicholas Hoffman & Company LLC. grew its position in Meta Platforms by 1.4% in the 2nd quarter. Nicholas Hoffman & Company LLC. now owns 7,253 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $4,086,000 after purchasing an additional 99 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Heritage Investors Management Corp boosted its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 11.7% in the 2nd quarter. Heritage Investors Management Corp now owns 48,434 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $27,282,000 after buying an additional 5,082 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Stock Up 1.0% META stock opened at $616.77 on Friday. 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 business’s 50 day moving average price is $596.16 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $609.26. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $790.80. The company has a market capitalization of $1.57 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.23, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.25.

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 business had revenue of $60.80 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The firm’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $7.14 earnings per share. As a group, analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total value of $754,800.00. Following the sale, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at approximately $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $4,379,184.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief technology officer owned 828 shares in the company, valued at approximately $462,024. This represents a 90.46% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. 13.53% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta opened paid developer access to Muse Spark 1.3, with company executives and analysts claiming the model is approaching or matching offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. Improved performance and token efficiency could support adoption in coding agents, model APIs, subscriptions and future generative-search advertising. Meta Platforms: Muse Spark 1.3 Was The Warning Shot Positive Sentiment: Recent coverage identifies Muse Spark 1.3 as a new catalyst that could improve confidence in Meta’s AI roadmap and help the company recover toward its prior highs, provided the technology translates into revenue and returns on investment. Meta Rises 4% as Muse Spark 1.3 Claims Parity with Anthropic and OpenAI Positive Sentiment: Some investment commentary views Meta as a major beneficiary of the ongoing AI infrastructure and computing cycle, alongside other hyperscalers, potentially creating a long-term growth opportunity. Hyperscalers Are the Backbone of AI Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several research firms have weighed in on META. KeyCorp cut their price objective on Meta Platforms from $790.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group cut their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $640.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Cantor Fitzgerald decreased their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $680.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Guggenheim reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $800.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and nine have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.22.

Get Our Latest Research Report on META

Meta Platforms Company 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 Revolution Medicines Got Its Breakthrough—What Moves It Next? Retail Earnings Just Exposed a Bigger Divide in the U.S. Consumer Economy FB Financial’s Southern Expansion and Buybacks Drive Analyst Optimism AST SpaceMobile Stock Soared 12%—This Was the Catalyst

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Heritage Investors Management Corp boosted its stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 11.7% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 48,434 shares of the social networking company’s stock after acquiring an additional 5,082 shares during the quarter. Heritage Investors Management Corp’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $27,282,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its holdings 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 valued at $69,502,379,000 after purchasing an additional 105,154,977 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 5.1% during 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 raised its position in Meta Platforms by 1.7% in the 4th 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. Capital World Investors lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.8% in the 4th quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after acquiring an additional 310,947 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 2.2% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 37,553,102 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $24,788,429,000 after acquiring an additional 823,883 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

META stock opened at $616.77 on Friday. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $596.16 and its 200 day simple moving average is $609.26. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $790.80. 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 company has a market cap of $1.57 trillion, a P/E ratio of 23.23, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.06 and a beta of 1.25.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates 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 firm’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $7.14 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Insider Transactions at Meta Platforms In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider Curtis Mahoney sold 1,559 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $869,922.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,957 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,092,006. The trade was a 44.34% 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. In the last quarter, insiders sold 32,987 shares of company stock worth $19,202,995. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta opened paid developer access to Muse Spark 1.3, with company executives and analysts claiming the model is approaching or matching offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. Improved performance and token efficiency could support adoption in coding agents, model APIs, subscriptions and future generative-search advertising. Meta Platforms: Muse Spark 1.3 Was The Warning Shot Positive Sentiment: Recent coverage identifies Muse Spark 1.3 as a new catalyst that could improve confidence in Meta’s AI roadmap and help the company recover toward its prior highs, provided the technology translates into revenue and returns on investment. Meta Rises 4% as Muse Spark 1.3 Claims Parity with Anthropic and OpenAI Positive Sentiment: Some investment commentary views Meta as a major beneficiary of the ongoing AI infrastructure and computing cycle, alongside other hyperscalers, potentially creating a long-term growth opportunity. Hyperscalers Are the Backbone of AI Analyst Ratings Changes META has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Wall Street Zen lowered Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday, May 16th. UBS Group cut their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Bank of America reduced their price objective on Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $810.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Citigroup dropped their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald lowered their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $680.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $785.22.

Get Our Latest Stock Report on Meta Platforms

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.

Read More Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Revolution Medicines Got Its Breakthrough—What Moves It Next? Retail Earnings Just Exposed a Bigger Divide in the U.S. Consumer Economy FB Financial’s Southern Expansion and Buybacks Drive Analyst Optimism AST SpaceMobile Stock Soared 12%—This Was the Catalyst

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Muse Spark's cheapest tier exchanges extraordinary token discounts for permission to improve future models with customer activity. Summary

Meta is subsidizing adoption with training data instead of cash.

Meta Platforms META, the social-media and artificial-intelligence giant, put a staggering 95.3% discount on Muse Spark output tokens as its stock stood at $611.53 on Sept. 4. One million output tokens cost $4.25 under standard pricing. Developers choosing the contributor tier pay just $0.20. The catch is simple: Meta gets access to their prompts and outputs.

Muse Spark 1.3 arrives with sharper coding and agentic capabilities, and developers are already biting. Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang told Axios that a double-digit percentage of coders had selected the contributor option. Input pricing tumbles from $1.25 to $0.10 per million tokens. Buying one million input and output tokens therefore costs $5.50 under standard terms but only $0.30 through the contributor tier—a 94.5% saving.

Meta is not merely cutting prices. It is buying a front-row seat to how developers use AI agents for real work, potentially feeding valuable examples back into future models. Independent coders may jump at the bargain, while companies protecting proprietary code and internal workflows could quickly walk away. The valuation chart adds another jolt: Meta's $611.53 share price sits 27.84% below its $847.42 GF Value estimate, signaling a gap investors cannot ignore.

Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.

Click for the complete disclosure

Meta has agreed to pay up to $17 billion and make sweeping changes to Instagram and Facebook as part of a landmark child safety settlement with nearly every U.S. state. The deal introduces new protections for teens, including time limits, overnight blocks and stronger age verification, changes that could fundamentally alter how young people use Meta's platforms.

Muse Spark 1.3 materially narrows Meta Platforms, Inc.'s performance and token efficiency gap with leading frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI, restoring credibility to its AI strategy. The latest model's competitive token unit economics could accelerate adoption and reinforce Meta's monetization across coding agents, model APIs and AI subscriptions. This also underscores an emerging opportunity in generative search ads for Meta, which could unlock incremental ROI on its expanding AI technology stack that remains underappreciated.

Boomfish Wealth Group LLC increased its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 31.8% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 6,343 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 1,531 shares during the quarter. Meta Platforms accounts for about 1.6% of Boomfish Wealth Group LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 17th largest position. Boomfish Wealth Group LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $3,573,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in META. Auto Owners Insurance Co grew its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% during the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $69,502,379,000 after acquiring an additional 105,154,977 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth $22,152,075,000. Vanguard Group Inc. raised 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 worth $132,015,115,000 after purchasing an additional 7,269,279 shares during the period. Corient Private Wealth LLC raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 488.1% in the 4th quarter. Corient Private Wealth LLC now owns 5,466,595 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $3,608,445,000 after purchasing an additional 4,537,076 shares during the period. Finally, State Street Corp lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 5.1% during the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $59,963,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,395,763 shares in the last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.3, an upgraded AI model that AI chief Alexandr Wang says delivers the company’s biggest performance improvement yet and is comparable with offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. The announcement strengthened expectations that Meta can compete more effectively in generative AI and monetize its large user base. Meta Rises 4% as Muse Spark 1.3 Claims Parity With Anthropic and OpenAI Positive Sentiment: Analysts said Meta’s settlement of major social-media litigation could remove a legal overhang and accelerate the launch of new AI products. Some investors view the settlement as manageable relative to Meta’s scale and believe teen-usage restrictions may have limited revenue impact. Meta settlement could clear the way for new AI product launches, Morgan Stanley says Positive Sentiment: Investment commentary highlighted Meta as one of the leading “hyperscalers” supporting the AI ecosystem, with strong revenue growth, user engagement and long-term AI monetization potential. Hyperscalers are the backbone of AI Neutral Sentiment: Wedbush reaffirmed its Neutral rating, signaling that the AI opportunity is balanced by valuation, execution and spending concerns. Wedbush Reaffirms Neutral Rating for Meta Platforms Negative Sentiment: Meta reportedly agreed to pay as much as $17 billion over 10 years and make major changes to Instagram and Facebook for teen users. The settlement may reduce legal uncertainty, but its cost and potential limits on engagement create financial and operating risks. Meta Is Making These Major Changes for Teen Users After $17 Billion Settlement Negative Sentiment: Commentary warned that AI infrastructure spending could approach $145 billion, compressing free cash flow even as revenue grows. Investors also remain concerned about Meta’s dependence on successful AI execution to justify a recovery toward its prior high. Meta Stock Has a New AI Catalyst Negative Sentiment: Meta is paying users to share how they use its latest AI model, raising privacy and reputational concerns that could complicate adoption. Separately, the company disabled cameras on some AI glasses after detecting tampering with recording lights. Meta is paying to peek at how you use their latest AI model Insider Transactions at Meta Platforms In related news, insider Curtis Mahoney sold 1,559 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $869,922.00. Following the sale, the insider directly owned 1,957 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,092,006. The trade was a 44.34% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Susan Li sold 9,196 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total value of $5,063,409.56. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,260,343.46. The trade was a 41.09% 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. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. 13.53% of the stock is owned by insiders. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts have issued reports on the company. Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating and set a $810.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Monday, June 1st. 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. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $785.00 price objective (down from $800.00) on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Mizuho set a $750.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Benchmark restated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Thursday, August 27th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $785.22.

Read Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms Stock Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $610.68 on Friday. 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 company has a market cap of $1.56 trillion, a P/E ratio of 23.00, a P/E/G ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $594.83 and its two-hundred day moving average is $609.21. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52-week low of $520.26 and a 52-week high of $790.80.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly 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 return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The company had revenue of $60.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $7.14 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current fiscal year.

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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DSM Capital Partners LLC grew its stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 9.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 548,698 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 47,544 shares during the period. Meta Platforms accounts for approximately 5.3% of DSM Capital Partners LLC’s holdings, making the stock its 7th biggest holding. DSM Capital Partners LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $309,076,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. RHL Group LLC acquired a new stake in Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $28,000. Advantage Trust Co acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 2nd quarter valued at about $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth about $29,000. Finally, Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 1st quarter worth approximately $36,000. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $4,379,184.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 828 shares in the company, valued at approximately $462,024. This trade represents a 90.46% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,196 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total value of $5,063,409.56. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,260,343.46. This represents a 41.09% 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. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. 13.53% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Meta Platforms Trading Up 3.0% NASDAQ:META opened at $610.68 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $1.56 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a one year low of $520.26 and a one year high of $790.80. 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 business’s 50-day simple moving average is $594.83 and its 200 day simple moving average is $609.21. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $7.14 earnings per share. Meta Platforms’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Raymond James Financial lifted their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $850.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. Robert W. Baird reduced their price objective on Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and issued a $785.00 target price (down from $800.00) on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Guggenheim reiterated a “buy” rating and issued a $800.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, 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. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating and nine have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.22.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.3, an upgraded AI model that AI chief Alexandr Wang says delivers the company’s biggest performance improvement yet and is comparable with offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. The announcement strengthened expectations that Meta can compete more effectively in generative AI and monetize its large user base. Meta Rises 4% as Muse Spark 1.3 Claims Parity With Anthropic and OpenAI Positive Sentiment: Analysts said Meta’s settlement of major social-media litigation could remove a legal overhang and accelerate the launch of new AI products. Some investors view the settlement as manageable relative to Meta’s scale and believe teen-usage restrictions may have limited revenue impact. Meta settlement could clear the way for new AI product launches, Morgan Stanley says Positive Sentiment: Investment commentary highlighted Meta as one of the leading “hyperscalers” supporting the AI ecosystem, with strong revenue growth, user engagement and long-term AI monetization potential. Hyperscalers are the backbone of AI Neutral Sentiment: Wedbush reaffirmed its Neutral rating, signaling that the AI opportunity is balanced by valuation, execution and spending concerns. Wedbush Reaffirms Neutral Rating for Meta Platforms Negative Sentiment: Meta reportedly agreed to pay as much as $17 billion over 10 years and make major changes to Instagram and Facebook for teen users. The settlement may reduce legal uncertainty, but its cost and potential limits on engagement create financial and operating risks. Meta Is Making These Major Changes for Teen Users After $17 Billion Settlement Negative Sentiment: Commentary warned that AI infrastructure spending could approach $145 billion, compressing free cash flow even as revenue grows. Investors also remain concerned about Meta’s dependence on successful AI execution to justify a recovery toward its prior high. Meta Stock Has a New AI Catalyst Negative Sentiment: Meta is paying users to share how they use its latest AI model, raising privacy and reputational concerns that could complicate adoption. Separately, the company disabled cameras on some AI glasses after detecting tampering with recording lights. Meta is paying to peek at how you use their latest AI model 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 The Path to $230 Billion: Broadcom Outlines the Next Phase of Its AI Growth Story NVIDIA’s Hugging Face Deal Raises a Bigger Question About Its AI Moat Now Dropping the Dough: Yum! Brands Strategically Trims the Fat These 3 Stock Charts Just Flashed the Dreaded Death Cross Pattern

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Gateway Wealth Partners LLC lessened its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 33.6% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 13,525 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 6,837 shares during the period. Gateway Wealth Partners LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $7,619,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Brighton Jones LLC grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 1.7% in the fourth quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 34,551 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $20,230,000 after acquiring an additional 570 shares during the period. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC lifted its holdings in Meta Platforms by 10.2% in the fourth quarter. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC now owns 9,456 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $5,537,000 after acquiring an additional 875 shares during the period. Headwater Capital Co Ltd boosted its position in Meta Platforms by 294.7% in the first quarter. Headwater Capital Co Ltd now owns 150,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $86,454,000 after purchasing an additional 112,000 shares during the last quarter. Dymon Asia Capital Singapore PTE. LTD. bought a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 2nd quarter valued at about $213,000. Finally, Capital & Planning LLC bought a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the 2nd quarter valued at about $322,000. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Meta Platforms Stock Performance NASDAQ META opened at $610.68 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $1.56 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a quick ratio of 2.23, a current ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. The business has a 50-day moving average price of $594.83 and a 200-day moving average price of $609.21. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a twelve month low of $520.26 and a twelve month high of $790.80.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share (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 the consensus estimate of $60.22 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $7.14 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current fiscal year. Insider Activity In other news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total value of $754,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Susan Li sold 9,196 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total transaction of $5,063,409.56. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,260,343.46. This represents a 41.09% decrease in their position. 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 90 days, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.3, an upgraded AI model that AI chief Alexandr Wang says delivers the company’s biggest performance improvement yet and is comparable with offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI. The announcement strengthened expectations that Meta can compete more effectively in generative AI and monetize its large user base. Meta Rises 4% as Muse Spark 1.3 Claims Parity With Anthropic and OpenAI Positive Sentiment: Analysts said Meta’s settlement of major social-media litigation could remove a legal overhang and accelerate the launch of new AI products. Some investors view the settlement as manageable relative to Meta’s scale and believe teen-usage restrictions may have limited revenue impact. Meta settlement could clear the way for new AI product launches, Morgan Stanley says Positive Sentiment: Investment commentary highlighted Meta as one of the leading “hyperscalers” supporting the AI ecosystem, with strong revenue growth, user engagement and long-term AI monetization potential. Hyperscalers are the backbone of AI Neutral Sentiment: Wedbush reaffirmed its Neutral rating, signaling that the AI opportunity is balanced by valuation, execution and spending concerns. Wedbush Reaffirms Neutral Rating for Meta Platforms Negative Sentiment: Meta reportedly agreed to pay as much as $17 billion over 10 years and make major changes to Instagram and Facebook for teen users. The settlement may reduce legal uncertainty, but its cost and potential limits on engagement create financial and operating risks. Meta Is Making These Major Changes for Teen Users After $17 Billion Settlement Negative Sentiment: Commentary warned that AI infrastructure spending could approach $145 billion, compressing free cash flow even as revenue grows. Investors also remain concerned about Meta’s dependence on successful AI execution to justify a recovery toward its prior high. Meta Stock Has a New AI Catalyst Negative Sentiment: Meta is paying users to share how they use its latest AI model, raising privacy and reputational concerns that could complicate adoption. Separately, the company disabled cameras on some AI glasses after detecting tampering with recording lights. Meta is paying to peek at how you use their latest AI model Analysts Set New Price Targets Several equities analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Scotiabank reiterated a “sector perform” rating and issued a $600.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Citigroup cut their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen reduced their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Monness Crespi & Hardt decreased their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Susquehanna dropped their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $900.00 to $650.00 and set a “positive” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and nine have issued a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.22.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on META

Meta Platforms Company 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.

Recommended Stories Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms The Path to $230 Billion: Broadcom Outlines the Next Phase of Its AI Growth Story NVIDIA’s Hugging Face Deal Raises a Bigger Question About Its AI Moat Now Dropping the Dough: Yum! Brands Strategically Trims the Fat These 3 Stock Charts Just Flashed the Dreaded Death Cross Pattern

Receive News & Ratings for Meta Platforms Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Meta Platforms and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Last week, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, agreed to a settlement of up to $18bn after dozens of US states accused it of harming children with addictive products. The settlement’s regulatory implications for social media will affect every user, far beyond teens.

But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.

The settlement does little to resolve the scientific question about the degree to which social media is addictive, but instead is the culmination of a battle launched by journalists and independent researchers in 2016 that focused on the digital design of disinformation campaigns powering Brexit in the UK and the US presidential election. Zuckerberg is the one throughline in Meta’s history of billion-dollar blunders that have hurt real people.

For the past 15 years, I have studied how science and technology produces social change, for better and worse. As the founder of The Critical Internet Studies Institute, I lead a team investigating harms caused by emerging technologies. We educate practitioners and professionals about the manifest and latent features of new technologies, warts and all. In 2020, I testified to Congress about misinformation as “secondhand smoke”. My comments followed the testimony of a Meta executive who likened the design process of making Meta’s engagement optimization algorithms to the ways tobacco companies made cigarettes more addictive.

In a series of op-eds, congressional briefings and research papers, I extended the tobacco case study to show how cultural attitudes about smoking as a personal luxury were upended by concepts such as secondhand smoke, and scientific confirmation that tobacco increases risk of cancer, whose true costs were passed on to families, insurance companies, and employers who lost time and resources to combatting smoking. The public health solution did not go as far as to ban smoking, but limited the areas where smoking was allowed, set an age limit for possession, made companies pay for public education campaigns on the hazards of the product, and most importantly, put products behind grumpy cashiers who validate IDs to purchase. Public health campaigns and warning labels were also important strategies.

Similarly, social media companies make all kinds of critical decisions about how to deliver content to your feed. Some of those features are algorithmically engineered to increase the likelihood of users remaining on the app.

The settlement comes with design restrictions; teen accounts are limited to two hours per day, no access from midnight to 6am, and no notifications from school bell to bell. Teen accounts must be linked to a parent’s accounts, amid stronger age verification. It’s still unclear how that will be implemented, but it promises to become a privacy nightmare. While these interventions limit time for 13-18 year olds, they do little to address contentious content, such as how drugs, sex and gambling end up algorithmically recommended.

It is clear that this latest settlement is the harbinger of a punishing future ahead for Zuckerberg’s businesses. Meta has litigated a number of issues, while avoiding any serious regulation on content moderation (cost center) or advertising (profit center). Enforcing these new rules for teens will increase costs. Meta has faced billions in settlements or fines for harms ranging from failing to protect user privacy to a 2018 security breach to abhorrent outcomes for young people’s mental health. Meta has also caused unremunerated harms to other groups, including amplifying hate speech against Rohingya in Myanmar and hosting and algorithmically promoting rampant medical misinformation and conspiracy theories leading to toxic poisoning and vaccine hesitancy that the World Health Organization labelled an “infodemic”.

Zuckerberg’s leadership failures directly led to well-documented damage to civic life, democracy, and global mental and physical health and wellbeing, especially that of young people. Since founding Facebook in 2004, Zuckerberg has been in constant litigation over a number of issues related to ownership and stock early on, which is where he first started to employ a PR strategy to delay, deny and deflect any issues that arise from executives’ decisions to put profit over users’ health. Meta executives lined their pockets off of the tragic and devastating amplification of hate, harassment and incitement.

Meanwhile, it has produced a cadre of whistleblowers, with more to come now that it’s clear these executives’ choices led to “real-world harm”, a Silicon Valley term of art that separates cyberspace from meatspace.

The settlement comes on the heels of last week’s damning hearings, where one of those whistleblowers, Arturo Béjar, boldly stated: “You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids.” Béjar was a lead on safety at Instagram when his teen daughter was the victim of unwanted sexist harassment and profanity on Instagram. Because of his role at Meta, he had real data for accurate measurements of harms on Instagram including the effectiveness of different algorithmic interventions on growth, engagement and user experience.

Béjar estimated he had met with Zuckerberg more than 100 times before becoming a whistleblower. Many whistleblowers’ stories begin with an ardent attempt to fix the problems through the correct channels and a refusal from higher-ups to tackle the issue. Ironically, whistleblowers tend to be rule followers who become increasingly indignant as their concerns are met with a workplace culture of ambivalence or advance compliance.

In December 2023, I experienced intense professional blowback in academia after obtaining documents culled from another whistleblower, Frances Haugen, which I intended to publish in a publicly accessible database. I acquired the documents legally and used my expertise to help tech insiders, journalists, researchers and Washington DC staffers understand what the Haugen documents did, and importantly did not, say about Meta’s liability and knowledge of product problems. But the message was clear: Meta, then called Facebook, knew of the damage Instagram caused to teenage girls.

And yet, through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200bn, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to those with wealth like his, so the first step to safeguard society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products. His vision for “a future for everyone” is an incredibly facile utopia, where AI agents run your life and you just slop your way through it.

Beyond the courts, Meta could triage the situation by calling for Zuckerberg to voluntarily resign. Ushering in hope for the future of technology requires changing Meta’s leadership now, so that the future is collectively imagined and built upon a new reputation and commitment.

Zuckerberg does not deserve another chance simply because he can afford it. We as a society ultimately pay for his mistakes. Now is the time for shareholders to speak up and push back on Zuckerberg’s dominance and control.

Joan Donovan is an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University who studies how technology impacts society. She is the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute, where she leads a project on political violence and social movements

Most AI tools allow you to opt out of sharing your usage with the model provider to improve future versions. Meta has taken that idea and put a price tag on it.

For its new Muse Spark model, intended for operating coding and other agents, Meta is offering an explicit discount averaging out to about 95% for users who “contribute” to the development of future models by sharing their prompts and model outputs.

While 1 million input tokens under a standard agreement costs $1.25, under the contributor pricing model they cost just 10 cents. For output tokens, the standard price is $4.25 per million, but that same million costs just 20 cents under the contributor model.

Meta has had a rough time trying to obtain training data: An initiative to track the computer usage of its employees, launched earlier this year, attracted wide internal criticism and was paused in June. The company didn’t respond to a question from TechCrunch about its new pricing model.

This kind of user data is vital for making agentic tools work better. “The reason we saw a big jump in [coding agent] capabilities between April 2025 and October 2025 was that Claude Code, by default, would store all your coding agent sessions and use them for reinforcement learning training,” Mario Zechner, the developer behind the open source harness Pi, told TechCrunch last month.

But even as the imperative for model builders increasingly becomes deploying agentic tools for use outside of software engineering, their ability to evaluate and improve those tools is blocked by the complexity and lack of digital traces for many professional workflows.

Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton computer science professor, noted that there is good evidence that large companies don’t want their data to be used for model training.

“They stick with token-billed Enterprise plans even though the subscription-based consumer plans like Claude Max and ChatGPT Pro are discounted by 10x-20x or even more! (The main difference between the plans is data retention + enterprise IT governance),” he wrote on social media.

Perhaps in recognition of those dynamics, Meta is offering companies explicit compensation to obtain that information. Its pricing guide notes that the contributor tier “lowers the barrier to entry for prototyping, testing integrations, and scaling experiments where training on your data is acceptable.”

That, Narayanan suggested, could in turn incentivize large companies to be more diligent about which data is truly proprietary and which could be shared with model providers.

The framework could also play into growing price competition between the frontier labs. Anthropic’s newest Fable and Mythos models, released yesterday, came with lowered costs for processing cached tokens, while OpenAI’s latest models got major price cuts at the end of July.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Tim Fernholz is a journalist who writes about technology, finance and public policy. He has closely covered the rise of the private space industry and is the author of Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the New Space Race. Formerly, he was a senior reporter at Quartz, the global business news site, for more than a decade, and began his career as a political reporter in Washington, D.C. You can contact or verify outreach from Tim by emailing [email protected] or via an encrypted message to tim_fernholz.21 on Signal.

Meta Platforms Inc. (META +3.01%) stock is up 3.7% as of 3:17 p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026, after the release of its Muse Spark 1.3 AI model.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were up 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively.

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Muse Spark 1.3 improves Meta's coding tools Meta released Muse Spark 1.3 late Wednesday, the newest iteration of its AI model. The company says it is better at coding and at agentic tasks -- work that AI can do work with less human help.

The model scored well on benchmark tests, placing it among the leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang said the release lays the groundwork for future personal AI assistants.

Meta still needs people to use what it builds Meta has been spending an enormous amount on AI, so investors understandably want to see something come out of it. Muse Spark 1.3 is not a dramatic new iteration, but it is a sign that Meta's models are improving and that it can compete with offerings from frontier labs.

Image source: Getty Images.

The bigger test is whether these improvements lead to products consumers actually use and, eventually, products that can help pay for Meta's massive AI investment.

Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) shares climbed more than 4% on Thursday after the company unveiled an upgraded version of its flagship AI model, which its AI chief says now matches offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.

The new model, Muse Spark 1.3, marks Meta's "biggest jump so far on model performance," according to Alexandr Wang, the company's AI chief.

Meta said the update improves agentic and coding capabilities and is designed to be easier to use in everyday scenarios.

Developers can already access and pay for Muse Spark 1.3, with availability on Meta's social platforms and Meta AI to follow.

In a blog post, Meta said Muse Spark 1.3 delivers improved performance across agentic and coding tasks, building on lessons learned from months of adoption of Muse Code and the Meta Model API. The company said the model is also easier to use in real-world settings.

"Smarter and more practically useful, Muse Spark 1.3 advances our work toward personal superintelligence," Meta said.

The model is rolling out in Muse Code and the Meta Model API. Previously available reasoning modes are live now, with a max reasoning mode expected shortly once additional safety testing is complete.

Meta said Muse Spark 1.3 is designed to handle open-ended, longer-horizon tasks by pulling context from varied sources, correcting its own plan as it goes, and delivering a final result across a single extended thread.

Meta said its roadmap ahead includes larger models and an open weights release for Muse Spark, among other developments.

Emise dluhopisů souvisejících s AI a technologiemi jsou pro úvěrové investory stále obtížnější ignorovat, a to vzhledem k objemu nové nabídky v poslední době a epizodám zvýšené volatility. To, co bylo zpočátku z velké části jen o americkém segmentu investičního stupně, se nyní rozšiřuje napříč regiony i napříč spektrem úvěrů různé kvality. Společnost Fidelity International se zabývá rozhodováním, které vzniká u strategií zaměřené na výnos bez omezení nějakým benchmarkem, a vysvětluje, proč v současnosti udržuje v tomto sektoru pouze omezenou expozici.

Argumenty ve prospěch dluhopisů souvisejících s AI

„Již dlouho jsme zastánci konceptu „bezpečného výnosu“ (safe yield) u investic s pevným výnosem. Zatímco otazníky ohledně rozvah vyspělých ekonomik a fiskální disciplíny přetrvávají, není pochyb o tom, že některé z největších a nejkvalitnějších úvěrových titulů na světě trpí tím, že musí své dluhopisy oceňovat s přirážkou vůči „bezrizikové“ sazbě, přestože mají výrazně lepší rozvahu než státy, vůči jejichž výnosům se oceňují. V tomto kontextu je získání přibližně 50–100 bazických bodů nad americké státní dluhopisy nebo německé státní dluhopisy například u nezadlužených emitentů s ratingem AA nebo A teoreticky atraktivní příležitostí pro investory zaměřené na celkový výnos.

Velký význam také přikládáme ukazateli „dluh v poměru k EV“ jako užitečnému indikátoru celkového úvěrového rizika. Tento ukazatel může často poskytnout mnohem více informací než tradičnější ukazatele, jako je dluh k EBITDA nebo volný Cash Flow ke dluhu. Dluh v poměru k EV jednoznačně ukazuje, jakou hodnotu trh přisuzuje cenným papírům, které jsou (alespoň teoreticky!) podřízené pohledávkám věřitelů vůči aktivům a peněžním tokům společnosti. Bez ohledu na to, kolik prostředků hyperskalární společnosti v příštích několika letech vloží do AI, jejich hodnota vlastního kapitálu ve výši pravděpodobně 13 bilionů dolarů znamená, že věřitelé se nemusí obávat znehodnocení svých pohledávek.

Dnešní valuace jsou atraktivní. Není pochyb o tom, že technologický sektor se z různých hledisek jeví jako „levný“, ať už jde o relativní ocenění sektoru, spread na jednotku zadlužení nebo spready upravené podle ratingu,“ hodnotí situaci James Durance.

Co nás drží zpátky?

Rychlost a rozsah rozvoje AI jsou tak obrovské, že převyšují jakékoli historické srovnání, které by za něco stálo. Kapitálové výdaje na datová centra, které v roce 2027 dosáhnou více než 3 % amerického HDP a během pouhých dvou let přidají 1,7procentního bodu k HDP, představují nejrychlejší investiční boom v historii (jak uvádí Apollo). To znamená, že financování tohoto rozvoje je také v rozsahu, který dosud nebyl otestován. Jelikož jde o tak významný příspěvek k růstu HDP, případné zpomalení nebo obrat tohoto trendu by mohl být významným negativním faktorem pro ekonomiku jako celek.

Výnos z AI – jak pro společnosti realizující kapitálové výdaje, tak pro zákazníky investující do této technologie – zůstává obtížně vyčíslitelný. Cirkulární financování pomáhá rozvoji pokračovat, avšak ziskové marže v ekonomice mimo technologický sektor, stejně jako marže samotných tvůrců této infrastruktury, zatím nezažily takový skok, jaký bychom potřebovali vidět, aby ospravedlnil obrovské množství investovaného kapitálu.

Historie není nakloněna nadvýkonnosti sektorů s rychlým růstem zadlužení. Sektory s nejrychlejším růstem dluhu obvykle v klíčových časových obdobích zaostávaly za trhem, často s dramaticky negativními důsledky – zejména technologie/ telekomunikace, média a technologie v roce 2001, finanční sektor a nemovitosti v roce 2007 a břidlice a energetika v roce 2014.

Zdá se, že úvěrový trh zatím zvolil kategorizovat většinu rizika v tomto prostoru spíše jako riziko související s nabídkou než jako riziko vyplývající z úvěrových fundamentů. Vyšší než očekávaná nabídka byla nepochybně hlavním faktorem nedávného zhoršení výkonnosti dluhopisů. Oznámení Googlu, že letos již nebude emitovat další dluh v dolarech, a jakékoli další známky toho, že by tempo emisí mohlo zpomalovat, by proto měly být významným pozitivním faktorem pro trh, který se letos potýká s nadměrným objemem technologických emisí.

Co to znamená pro nastavení pozic?

Jako investoři, kteří nejsou vázáni benchmarkem, můžeme na situaci nahlížet trochu jinak než manažeři, kteří se vůči benchmarku poměřují. Benchmarkoví investoři se musí zaměřovat na velikost jednotlivých sektorů ve svých indexech (viz obrázek 1 níže) a na související tracking error, aby měli co nejlepší šanci generovat alfa. Neomezený investor se naopak může věnovat tomu, zda si sektor jako celek a každý jednotlivý titul skutečně zaslouží jeho pozornost.

Zadruhé, na jiných částech globálního úvěrového trhu můžeme najít srovnatelné nebo dokonce vyšší výnosy než v technologickém sektoru, aniž by s sebou nesly stejné rizikové faktory. To může znamenat podstoupení rizik v jiných oblastech, jako je nižší úvěrová kvalita (BB), riziko podřízenosti (evropské finanční společnosti a podnikové hybridní dluhopisy), strukturální riziko (CLO) nebo cyklické riziko (například nemovitosti nebo automobilový sektor).

Zatřetí, tradičně jsme se zaměřovali na větší emitenty s dlouhou historií na kapitálových trzích a na známé společnosti, protože se domníváme, že to obecně vede k nižšímu riziku finančních potíží a selhání v průběhu času. Přestože je rozvoj AI skutečný a jeho potenciální ekonomické dopady jsou skutečně zásadní, domníváme se, že tato revoluce bude mít své vítěze i poražené. Za jinak stejných podmínek by to mohlo znamenat vyšší míru defaultů – zejména u některých novějších, menších a spekulativnějších struktur, které přicházejí na trh,“ vysvětluje James Durance.

Technologie a hyperskalární společnosti by mohly dosáhnout až 11 % amerického indexu podnikových dluhopisů investičního stupně

Zdroj: Fidelity International, Deutsche Bank, Bloomberg, ICE Indices. Mezi hyperscalery jsou zahrnuty společnosti MSFT, AMZN, META, GOOGL, ORCL, NVDA, SPCX.

Meta is entering the increasingly competitive real-time speech-to-text market with Muse Voice Transcribe, a new audio perception model that combines streaming transcription, endpoint detection and speaker diarization for more than 20 speakers — at a public API price of just $0.18 per hour of processed audio. Developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, Muse is designed to process speech while it happens rather than waiting for a recording to finish.

Elevated Capital Advisors LLC lessened its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 29.7% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 2,230 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 940 shares during the quarter. Elevated Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $1,256,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Lowe Brockenbrough & Co. Inc. lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 5.0% during the second quarter. Lowe Brockenbrough & Co. Inc. now owns 41,480 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $23,365,000 after purchasing an additional 1,961 shares during the last quarter. Carrera Capital Advisors grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 8.1% in the second quarter. Carrera Capital Advisors now owns 1,341 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $755,000 after purchasing an additional 101 shares during the last quarter. Turn8 Private Wealth Inc. increased its stake in Meta Platforms by 386.3% in the 2nd quarter. Turn8 Private Wealth Inc. now owns 2,412 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,345,000 after buying an additional 1,916 shares during the period. Fire Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Meta Platforms by 42.0% in the 2nd quarter. Fire Capital Management LLC now owns 2,352 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,325,000 after buying an additional 696 shares during the period. Finally, Yelin Lapidot Holdings Management Ltd. lifted its holdings in Meta Platforms by 25.0% during the 2nd quarter. Yelin Lapidot Holdings Management Ltd. now owns 39,487 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $22,243,000 after buying an additional 7,887 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: Analysts see Meta’s AI investments improving ad targeting and engagement, potentially allowing the company to challenge Google for digital-advertising leadership. The strong advertising outlook is particularly important after Meta’s latest quarter delivered 28% year-over-year revenue growth to $60.8 billion. Meta versus Google advertising analysis Positive Sentiment: Several reports characterize META as undervalued, citing a forward P/E of roughly 16—well below its historical average—and arguing that legal clarity plus new AI products could support substantial upside. The settlement may remove a major overhang even though it carries a large financial charge. Meta valuation and AI upside analysis Positive Sentiment: Wedbush reaffirmed a Neutral rating but raised or maintained a $595 price target, implying modest upside from the referenced trading level. Separately, the planned IPO of Meta-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms could improve the value and liquidity of an important investment. Meta market news Jio Platforms IPO approval Neutral Sentiment: Meta is switching internal communications from Google Chat to Slack because management considers Slack better suited to AI agents. The move highlights Meta’s push to integrate AI into operations but is not expected to materially change near-term financial results. Meta switches to Slack Neutral Sentiment: Meta-backed AI startup Manus said it has resumed independent operations after China blocked Meta’s proposed acquisition. This removes some uncertainty around the transaction but also means Meta will not immediately gain full ownership of the startup. Manus resumes independent operations Negative Sentiment: The approximately $17 billion–$18 billion settlement over alleged harm to children creates a substantial cash cost and requires stronger age verification, potentially increasing compliance expenses and reducing young-user engagement. Critics also question whether the agreement will resolve regulatory pressure. Meta child-safety settlement requirements Negative Sentiment: Reports that Meta spent heavily on AI infrastructure underscore depreciation and capital-expenditure risks: investors must determine whether the spending will generate enough incremental advertising and product revenue. Meta also removed dozens of India-based malware advertisements, highlighting continuing platform-safety and reputational risks. Big Tech AI spending risks Meta removes fraudulent India ads Meta Platforms Stock Performance Shares of META stock opened at $578.54 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.79, a PEG ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.25. The company’s 50 day moving average is $592.78 and its 200 day moving average is $609.82. 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 52-week low of $520.26 and a 52-week high of $790.80. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates 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 return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $7.14 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity In other Meta Platforms news, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 1,559 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $869,922.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,957 shares in the company, valued at $1,092,006. This trade represents a 44.34% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing 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. Also, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total transaction of $4,379,184.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 828 shares in the company, valued at $462,024. This represents a 90.46% 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 three months, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth META has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. UBS Group dropped their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price target on Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $640.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Raymond James Financial increased their price objective on Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $850.00 and gave the stock a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 21st. Sanford C. Bernstein restated an “outperform” rating and set a $800.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Wolfe Research reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $700.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating and nine have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.22.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms Company 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.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Dutch Bros Sell-Off Creates a Growth Opportunity NVIDIA’s MediaTek Bet Shows How It Plans to Defend Its AI Moat Is Abercrombie & Fitch’s Hot Streak Just Getting Started? Medtronic’s Stars Are Aligning for a Price Recovery Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).

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Hodges Capital Management Inc. trimmed its position in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 31.1% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 9,359 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 4,229 shares during the quarter. Hodges Capital Management Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $5,272,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of META. Lowe Brockenbrough & Co. Inc. increased its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 5.0% in the second quarter. Lowe Brockenbrough & Co. Inc. now owns 41,480 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $23,365,000 after buying an additional 1,961 shares in the last quarter. Carrera Capital Advisors boosted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 8.1% in the 2nd quarter. Carrera Capital Advisors now owns 1,341 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $755,000 after buying an additional 101 shares in the last quarter. Turn8 Private Wealth Inc. boosted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 386.3% in the 2nd quarter. Turn8 Private Wealth Inc. now owns 2,412 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,345,000 after buying an additional 1,916 shares in the last quarter. Fire Capital Management LLC grew its stake in Meta Platforms by 42.0% in the 2nd quarter. Fire Capital Management LLC now owns 2,352 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,325,000 after acquiring an additional 696 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Yelin Lapidot Holdings Management Ltd. grew its stake in Meta Platforms by 25.0% in the 2nd quarter. Yelin Lapidot Holdings Management Ltd. now owns 39,487 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $22,243,000 after acquiring an additional 7,887 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

Meta Platforms Stock Up 1.1% Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $578.54 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a P/E ratio of 21.79, 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. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1 year low of $520.26 and a 1 year high of $790.80. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $592.78 and its 200 day moving average price is $609.82.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued 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). 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 during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $7.14 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current year. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities analysts have issued reports on META shares. Scotiabank restated a “sector perform” rating and set a $600.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Evercore reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Citigroup dropped their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Wall Street Zen lowered Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Saturday, May 16th. Finally, Benchmark reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Thursday, August 27th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating and nine have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.22.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Meta Platforms

Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The stock was 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. The trade was a 14.52% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,196 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total transaction of $5,063,409.56. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,260,343.46. The trade was a 41.09% 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. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. 13.53% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

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

Positive Sentiment: Analysts see Meta’s AI investments improving ad targeting and engagement, potentially allowing the company to challenge Google for digital-advertising leadership. The strong advertising outlook is particularly important after Meta’s latest quarter delivered 28% year-over-year revenue growth to $60.8 billion. Meta versus Google advertising analysis Positive Sentiment: Several reports characterize META as undervalued, citing a forward P/E of roughly 16—well below its historical average—and arguing that legal clarity plus new AI products could support substantial upside. The settlement may remove a major overhang even though it carries a large financial charge. Meta valuation and AI upside analysis Positive Sentiment: Wedbush reaffirmed a Neutral rating but raised or maintained a $595 price target, implying modest upside from the referenced trading level. Separately, the planned IPO of Meta-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms could improve the value and liquidity of an important investment. Meta market news Jio Platforms IPO approval Neutral Sentiment: Meta is switching internal communications from Google Chat to Slack because management considers Slack better suited to AI agents. The move highlights Meta’s push to integrate AI into operations but is not expected to materially change near-term financial results. Meta switches to Slack Neutral Sentiment: Meta-backed AI startup Manus said it has resumed independent operations after China blocked Meta’s proposed acquisition. This removes some uncertainty around the transaction but also means Meta will not immediately gain full ownership of the startup. Manus resumes independent operations Negative Sentiment: The approximately $17 billion–$18 billion settlement over alleged harm to children creates a substantial cash cost and requires stronger age verification, potentially increasing compliance expenses and reducing young-user engagement. Critics also question whether the agreement will resolve regulatory pressure. Meta child-safety settlement requirements Negative Sentiment: Reports that Meta spent heavily on AI infrastructure underscore depreciation and capital-expenditure risks: investors must determine whether the spending will generate enough incremental advertising and product revenue. Meta also removed dozens of India-based malware advertisements, highlighting continuing platform-safety and reputational risks. Big Tech AI spending risks Meta removes fraudulent India ads 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.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Dutch Bros Sell-Off Creates a Growth Opportunity NVIDIA’s MediaTek Bet Shows How It Plans to Defend Its AI Moat Is Abercrombie & Fitch’s Hot Streak Just Getting Started? Medtronic’s Stars Are Aligning for a Price Recovery

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Early MCP integration brings conversational AI and connected campaign intelligence to Meta advertising workflows

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Innovid, the leading omnichannel advertising platform, today announced its integration with Meta ads MCP (Model Context Protocol), bringing secure, conversational workflows to Meta advertisers through NIVO, Innovid’s AI. As a Meta ads MCP partner, Innovid is helping shape how enterprise marketers adopt the next generation of agentic AI workflows.

Innovid expands NIVO with Meta Ads MCP integration to bring connected AI workflows to social advertising

Share Across early enterprise testing, Innovid has used the integration to summarize campaign health, identify performance trends, surface optimization opportunities, and pinpoint creative assets needing attention—all through natural-language conversations. Meta ads MCP provides secure access to campaign data, and NIVO adds advertising expertise and workflow intelligence to transform those signals into meaningful action. For clients, that means the gap between “something’s off” and “here’s what to do about it” gets significantly shorter.

The Innovid integration allows clients to access the latest AI capabilities available through platform APIs from a single connected conversational experience. Rather than forcing marketers to learn separate AI assistants and workflows for every platform, NIVO brings campaign intelligence into an experience that helps marketers analyze performance, surface opportunities, and take action.

What this means for Innovid clients:

Ask questions naturally: Campaign performance can be explored through conversation instead of navigating multiple reports and dashboards. Spot opportunities earlier: Performance trends and creative fatigue can be identified sooner, helping marketers uncover optimization opportunities before performance suffers. Move from insight to action: Recommendations are connected directly to advertising workflows, helping marketers act faster. Work with confidence: Secure, authenticated access keeps AI grounded in trusted campaign data without compromising governance. Innovid has worked closely with Meta’s product team throughout the Meta ads MCP beta program, providing feedback on workflow design, usability, and real-world advertising use cases. The collaboration helps validate how emerging open protocols like MCP can accelerate AI innovation while preserving the security, transparency, and governance enterprise advertisers require.

“The promise of agentic AI isn’t just generating recommendations, it’s also enabling meaningful action across advertising workflows,” said Grant Parker, President, Innovid. “Our early work with Meta ads MCP demonstrates how secure, authenticated access to advertising data allows AI agents to analyze performance, understand campaign context, surface opportunities, and help marketers move from insight to execution. As more platforms embrace open AI protocols, we’re excited to bring those innovations together through NIVO in ways that make marketers faster, smarter, and more connected.”

Innovid will continue expanding its AI integrations as advertising platforms evolve their MCP initiatives, bringing new capabilities into NIVO and helping marketers benefit from connected, interoperable AI workflows across the ecosystem.

About Innovid
Innovid is the leading omnichannel advertising platform, empowering marketers to create, deliver, measure, and optimize ad-supported experiences. At the core of Innovid is NIVO, powering AI agents and orchestration to activate, adapt, and optimize campaigns across the advertising lifecycle. As part of Mediaocean, Innovid is tied into Prisma, the industry’s core ad infrastructure for planning, buying, and billing, as well as Protected for verification, fraud detection, and brand safety. Visit www.innovid.com to learn more.

PJM yanked a Meta-backed nuclear campus from its grid queue, hitting Oklo with a company-specific blow on top of a sector already reeling from surging Treasury yields. How those two pressures compound tells investors something important about every pre-revenue reactor…

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Two separate stories are stacked on the nuclear sector today, and Oklo (NYSE:OKLO | OKLO Price Prediction) sits at the center of both. Rising long-term Treasury yields are pressuring every pre-revenue reactor developer, and Oklo carries an added company-specific hit after PJM Interconnection pulled its Meta-backed Ohio project from the grid queue.

Oklo stock is down 5% to $38.46 in early afternoon trading, a fresh reminder that the shares were already down 43% year to date (YTD) through Monday’s close. The move sets Oklo apart from the rest of the sector today.

Meanwhile, NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) stock is down 0.8% to $9.20, barely moving despite Oklo’s slide. Centrus Energy (NYSE:LEU) stock is down 3% to $166.53, tracking the sector rather than Oklo’s project-specific news.

FERC Complaint Over Meta-Backed Ohio Queue Oklo filed an emergency complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday, August 28, arguing that PJM Interconnection improperly removed a 750-megawatt generating project from its interconnection study cycle. The project combines 150 megawatts of advanced nuclear generation, 300 megawatts of fuel cells, and 300 megawatts of gas-fired generation.

PJM withdrew the project on August 3, citing application shortcomings that included Oklo not showing its project could ride through a sudden drop in grid voltage. Oklo says the removal will delay the project by at least 14 months and significantly increase development costs, that the deficiencies are fixable, and that PJM violated its own tariff by failing to flag problems and allow a chance to cure them.

The project sits inside Oklo’s planned 1.2-gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) agreed in January to back the campus, which is intended to supply its data centers.

PJM spokesman Jeffrey Shields said the grid operator doesn’t comment on individual interconnection applications, and noted that nearly 90% of the 811 projects submitting new service requests met the requirements to be studied in the most recent cycle. The most probable outcome from here remains a project delay.

Rates Weigh on the Wider Nuclear Complex A global bond selloff has lifted the 10-year Treasury note yield to 4.786%, above its prior one-year high of 4.75% set on July 31. Pre-revenue nuclear developers are long-duration assets whose value sits years out, so they discount harder as yields rise.

Also, Global X Uranium ETF (NYSEARCA:URA) is down 3% to $44.16, tracking the broader repricing across uranium and nuclear names. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down 0.7% to $761.68, a milder pullback that highlights how much pressure sits in duration-sensitive corners of the market.

The nuclear complex is falling harder than the broad market, and Oklo is falling harder than the nuclear complex. The pressure on Oklo today comes from grid interconnection, an execution risk that runs across every pre-revenue nuclear developer regardless of how sound its reactor design (we mapped five ways to play the restart, utilities and fuel included, in a free nuclear guide).

What to Watch Oklo asked FERC to restore its original queue position and to order PJM to respond by September 4, and PJM plans to file its response by Friday. Interconnection queue position is an unglamorous variable that decides whether any of these reactors ever sells power, and it now sits alongside licensing and construction as something to track.

Position sizing on Oklo stock should reflect that queue removal can compound with rising discount rates to widen drawdowns. Investors holding existing shares can trim into strength if the FERC response arrives on schedule, while new buyers can wait for clarity on whether the Ohio queue slot is restored.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Meta Platforms (META +1.50%) has faced at least two significant issues over the past year that have weighed on its stock. First, many investors aren't convinced that its massive artificial intelligence (AI)-related spending will yield the kind of return the company is hoping for. And since these investments are shrinking margins and earnings, skeptics have been running for the hills.

Second, Meta Platforms has faced lawsuits over its social media websites and apps. Plaintiffs allege that they have harmed users, especially younger users. The good news for Meta is that the company has made significant progress in overcoming one of these headwinds while keeping its core business mostly intact.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

A (not so) massive settlementA coalition of U.S. states and territories was suing Meta Platforms in lawsuits over social media addiction. On Aug. 26, they agreed to a settlement worth up to $17.1 billion that Meta will pay. The tech giant will also be required to install stronger guardrails to protect young users across its apps. These will include daily usage limits, the ability to opt out of personalized algorithms, and stricter parental controls.

Now, $17.1 billion sounds like a lot of money. For most corporations, it is. Not so for Meta Platforms, especially since it won’t have to pay it all at once (the base amount is payable over a decade). In the second quarter, the company's revenue increased by 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. Meta's net income was $15.8 billion, down 14% from the year-ago period (largely due to AI-related investments). So, the amount Meta will pay is roughly equal to a single quarter's worth of earnings, but divided across dozens of quarters.

It's not at all a catastrophic outcome compared to the alternative. Meta Platforms could have spent years fighting these lawsuits in court. For all we know, it might have incurred far more than $17.1 billion if it had lost, not to mention the damage a drawn-out, years-long legal battle might have done to its public image and reputation. Sure, the company's recently announced settlement doesn't leave its reputation intact, but it could have been worse if Meta's top executives had been forced to take the stand one after another.

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Meta has dealt with significant legal problems. In 2019, the company paid a $5 billion fine imposed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for violating consumer privacy. At the time, that was also about a quarter's worth of net income for Meta Platforms (then known as Facebook). And the social media giant has performed more or less in line with the S&P 500 since that $5 billion fine was announced.

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What's next for Meta Platforms Meta may have addressed one of its biggest risks, but what about the other? The company's spending could lead to even lower margins and earnings over the medium term. That is, unless Meta finds a way to turn its investment into genuinely lucrative monetization opportunities. The company has already improved its core advertising business thanks to AI, but there may be more to come. Meta Platforms is betting that AI agents are the future.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions highly personalized AI agents that everyone will use every day. If that is indeed the next stage of the AI revolution -- as others, like Nvidia's (NVDA -1.10%) CEO Jensen Huang, have also argued -- Meta could be in a great place to benefit. The company boasts 3.60 billion daily active users across its websites and apps. It has ample data from these users to craft personal AI agents, and launching these agents within its already vast ecosystem could help the company hit the ground running.

The result could be significantly improved engagement within Meta's ecosystem, and even higher ad-related revenue. Meta Platforms is reportedly also considering renting out excess AI computing capacity, which will likely boost revenue, margins, and profits, since this business is in high demand right now, and it wouldn't have to spend significantly more to do so. My view is that Meta will eventually justify its AI investments, and, given that it has successfully addressed arguably its most important headwind, the stock looks like a strong buy.

Daymark Wealth Partners LLC raised its position in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 114.7% during the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 35,435 shares of the social networking company’s stock after acquiring an additional 18,931 shares during the quarter. Daymark Wealth Partners LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $19,960,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of META. First National Bank Sioux Falls boosted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the 4th quarter. First National Bank Sioux Falls now owns 2,001 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,321,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares in the last quarter. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. increased its holdings in Meta Platforms by 1.4% in the fourth quarter. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. now owns 984 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $649,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares in the last quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. increased its holdings in Meta Platforms by 1.3% in the second quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. now owns 1,075 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $794,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares in the last quarter. Acorn Creek Capital LLC lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.7% in the fourth quarter. Acorn Creek Capital LLC now owns 2,118 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,398,000 after buying an additional 15 shares during the period. Finally, Objective Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 2.8% during the 4th quarter. Objective Capital Management LLC now owns 553 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $365,000 after buying an additional 15 shares in the last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Meta Platforms Stock Down 1.0% Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $572.34 on Tuesday. 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 company has a 50-day moving average price of $592.45 and a 200-day moving average price of $610.45. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.46 trillion, a P/E ratio of 21.56, a P/E/G ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1 year low of $520.26 and a 1 year high of $790.80.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The business had revenue of $60.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $7.14 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current fiscal year. Analysts Set New Price Targets Several brokerages have recently commented on META. UBS Group reduced their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Wall Street Zen downgraded shares of Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Saturday, May 16th. Phillip Securities raised shares of Meta Platforms to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, August 3rd. Arete Research set a $735.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, June 2nd. Finally, Weiss Ratings downgraded shares of Meta Platforms from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research note on Friday, June 26th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have assigned a Buy rating and nine have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.22.

Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on META

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

Positive Sentiment: Meta’s AI strategy remains a potential long-term catalyst. Analysts point to its roughly $60 billion AI investment program as a way to improve ad targeting, monetization and possibly challenge Google in search and digital advertising. Meta’s $60 Billion AI Machine Could Dethrone Google Search by Year-End Positive Sentiment: Meta-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms received regulatory approval for an initial public offering. A successful listing could provide a valuation reference for Meta’s investment and highlight the value of its strategic holdings. Meta- and Google-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms gets regulatory nod for IPO Positive Sentiment: Some investment commentary describes META as undervalued after its shares fell well below their prior record, citing second-quarter revenue growth of 28% to $60.8 billion and the potential for a recovery. Prediction: Meta Stock Reclaims Its All-Time High Before 2029 Neutral Sentiment: Meta has begun removing fraudulent advertisements in India that used explicit content to distribute malware. The action limits immediate user risk but underscores continuing challenges in ad-quality enforcement and platform trust. Meta removes ads for fraud apps posing as porn after India sounds alarm Negative Sentiment: Meta agreed to an approximately $17 billion to $18 billion settlement with U.S. states over allegations that its platforms harmed children and teens. The agreement requires stronger age verification and other safeguards, creating a substantial financial cost and potentially higher compliance expenses. Explainer: Settlement requires Meta to check young users’ ages Negative Sentiment: Research claiming Temu spent as much as $962 million on advertising tied to fake creators raises additional concerns about content moderation, advertiser oversight and reputational risk on Meta’s platforms. Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta platforms Insider Activity In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,196 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total value of $5,063,409.56. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,260,343.46. This represents a 41.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $4,379,184.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 828 shares in the company, valued at $462,024. This represents a 90.46% 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. In the last three months, insiders sold 32,987 shares of company stock worth $19,202,995. Company 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.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Securing AI: 5 Most-Upgraded Stocks From the Q2 Reporting Season Insiders Are Betting Big on These 3 Healthcare Stocks 3 Stocks for Investors Who Still Believe Cash Is King Dollar General and Dollar Tree Are Recovering, But Not for the Same Reason

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Cabot Wealth Management Inc. reduced its stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 25.3% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 7,406 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 2,514 shares during the quarter. Cabot Wealth Management Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $4,172,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Brighton Jones LLC raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 1.7% in the 4th quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 34,551 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $20,230,000 after purchasing an additional 570 shares during the period. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 10.2% in the fourth quarter. Revolve Wealth Partners LLC now owns 9,456 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $5,537,000 after purchasing an additional 875 shares during the period. Headwater Capital Co Ltd grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 294.7% in the first quarter. Headwater Capital Co Ltd now owns 150,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $86,454,000 after purchasing an additional 112,000 shares during the period. Dymon Asia Capital Singapore PTE. LTD. purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the second quarter valued at approximately $213,000. Finally, Capital & Planning LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the second quarter valued at approximately $322,000. 79.91% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Meta Platforms Stock Down 1.0% Shares of META opened at $572.34 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a one year low of $520.26 and a one year high of $790.80. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.46 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.56, a PEG ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.25. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $592.45 and a 200 day moving average price of $610.45.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The firm had revenue of $60.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $7.14 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Meta Platforms News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:

Positive Sentiment: Meta’s AI strategy remains a potential long-term catalyst. Analysts point to its roughly $60 billion AI investment program as a way to improve ad targeting, monetization and possibly challenge Google in search and digital advertising. Meta’s $60 Billion AI Machine Could Dethrone Google Search by Year-End Positive Sentiment: Meta-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms received regulatory approval for an initial public offering. A successful listing could provide a valuation reference for Meta’s investment and highlight the value of its strategic holdings. Meta- and Google-backed Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms gets regulatory nod for IPO Positive Sentiment: Some investment commentary describes META as undervalued after its shares fell well below their prior record, citing second-quarter revenue growth of 28% to $60.8 billion and the potential for a recovery. Prediction: Meta Stock Reclaims Its All-Time High Before 2029 Neutral Sentiment: Meta has begun removing fraudulent advertisements in India that used explicit content to distribute malware. The action limits immediate user risk but underscores continuing challenges in ad-quality enforcement and platform trust. Meta removes ads for fraud apps posing as porn after India sounds alarm Negative Sentiment: Meta agreed to an approximately $17 billion to $18 billion settlement with U.S. states over allegations that its platforms harmed children and teens. The agreement requires stronger age verification and other safeguards, creating a substantial financial cost and potentially higher compliance expenses. Explainer: Settlement requires Meta to check young users’ ages Negative Sentiment: Research claiming Temu spent as much as $962 million on advertising tied to fake creators raises additional concerns about content moderation, advertiser oversight and reputational risk on Meta’s platforms. Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta platforms Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several research analysts have recently weighed in on the company. Wedbush reduced their target price on Meta Platforms from $671.00 to $595.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and issued a $785.00 price target (down from $800.00) on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group cut their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial reduced their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $763.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday. Finally, Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and nine have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.22.

Read Our Latest Analysis on META

Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total value of $4,379,184.00. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 828 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $462,024. This trade represents a 90.46% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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. Over the last three months, insiders sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.

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.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Securing AI: 5 Most-Upgraded Stocks From the Q2 Reporting Season Insiders Are Betting Big on These 3 Healthcare Stocks 3 Stocks for Investors Who Still Believe Cash Is King Dollar General and Dollar Tree Are Recovering, But Not for the Same Reason Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).

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Apple and Meta both stumbled through August, but their earnings reports reveal two very different companies heading into a September packed with product launches, legal settlements, and AI spending decisions that could swing either stock hard.

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Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) both wobbled through August, yet their July earnings reports told sharply different stories. Apple posted a $109.4 billion clean sweep powered by iPhone 17 demand. Meta grew revenue 27.96% but missed EPS as AI spending, legal charges, and severance carved into margins.

iPhone 17 Carries Apple. Legal Bills Bruise Meta. Apple’s June quarter reached iPhone revenue of $54.3 billion, up 22%, with Tim Cook calling it a response to the “iPhone 17 family” he described as exceptional. Services hit $30.7 billion, up 12%, with paid subscriptions surpassing $1.5 billion. EPS came in at $2.02, a 6.8% beat, though roughly $0.11 came from tariff refunds. That is a real tailwind, but not a repeatable one.

Meta’s story was messier. Ad revenue jumped 27% to $59.36 billion, ad impressions rose 14%, and price per ad climbed 12%. Yet EPS of $6.18 missed by 14.42%, snapping a six-quarter beat streak. The culprits: $2.40 billion in legal charges, $1.18 billion in severance, and CapEx that surged to $30.116 billion. Free cash flow cratered 91.31% to $784 million.

Ecosystem Cash Machine vs. AI Moonshot Lens Apple Meta Core Bet iPhone 17 cycle plus Services AI compute and superintelligence 2026 CapEx Signal Measured, Broadcom deal exceeding $30 billion $130 to $145 billion Margin Reality Q4 guide 47% to 48% gross Operating margin fell to 31% from 43% Apple is monetizing its 2.5 billion active device base while spending carefully on R&D. Zuckerberg is doing the opposite, telling investors “AI is accelerating our core business today” while betting a nine-figure quarterly CapEx bill will compound later. That buildout has to be powered, cooled, and networked by somebody, and we pulled seven of those suppliers into a free AI infrastructure report. One approach prints cash now. The other asks shareholders to wait.

September Catalysts Favor Cupertino Apple guided September-quarter revenue growth of 9% to 11%, though Cook flagged a “100-year flood on the memory pricing” squeezing costs. I will watch whether the iPhone launch offsets that pressure. Meta’s Connect event on September 23rd and its Q3 guide of $61 to $64 billion matter, but so does the $16.68 billion settlement chatter dominating Reddit.

Why I Lean Apple Into September For my own money, Apple looks stronger heading into September. The setup is boring in the best way: a hardware launch, a Services business hitting records, and shareholder returns backed by $147 billion in cash. Meta’s ad engine is remarkable, and long-term believers in Zuckerberg’s AI capital expenditure thesis have a real case. If you want turnaround-style variance and can stomach open-ended regulatory and spending challenges, Meta fits. If you want clearer revenue visibility, Apple is the cleaner September trade.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

BioVie Inc (NASDAQ:BIVI, NASDAQ:BIVIW) announced that has completed the last on-treatment visit in its Phase 2 ADDRESS-LC clinical trial evaluating bezisterim in adults with Long COVID, with topline results targeted for release before the end of September 2026.

The Carson City, Nevada-based clinical-stage company is developing therapies for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. The ADDRESS-LC study is evaluating whether bezisterim can improve neurological symptoms associated with Long COVID, including cognitive impairment and fatigue.

The randomized, 1:1 placebo-controlled, multicenter Phase 2 trial is designed as a proof-of-concept study assessing the efficacy, safety and tolerability of bezisterim. Participants receive either a 20-milligram oral capsule of the drug twice daily or a matching placebo.

With the final on-treatment visit completed, BioVie noted that the one-month virtual follow-up period is nearly finished. The company expects to report topline data from the study before the end of September.

The trial is fully funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of War, formerly the US Department of Defense.

ADDRESS-LC is evaluating several measures related to Long COVID symptoms. These include changes in overall clinical benefit, subjective and objective cognitive function, fatigue, sleep disturbance, quality of life and post-exertional malaise.

"With the last patient's treatment visit completed, and the one-month virtual follow-up nearly complete, we anticipate announcing topline results for ADDRESS-LC before the end of September 2026," BioVie CEO Cuong Do said

"The growing body of research surrounding Long COVID continues to reinforce the rationale for bezisterim's proposed mechanism, particularly its modulation of inflammatory pathways associated with symptoms relating to fatigue and 'brain fog.'"

Penelope Markham, BioVie's senior vice president of liver disease and Long COVID programs, added that the company was grateful to trial participants, investigators and site staff, as well as members of the Long COVID community who supported enrollment and participation.

BioVie noted that an estimated 17 million to 20 million US adults are living with Long COVID, with about 3.8 million experiencing significant limitations to their daily lives. The company cited research indicating that neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms are among the more common and disabling manifestations of the condition, including fatigue, post-exertional malaise, sleep disturbances and persistent difficulties with thinking and memory.

The company also pointed to chronic innate inflammation and ongoing immune dysregulation as leading hypotheses being investigated to explain Long COVID symptoms. BioVie believes findings from Long COVID research support biological targets relevant to bezisterim.

There are currently no FDA-approved treatments specifically for Long COVID, according to the company. The upcoming ADDRESS-LC topline results are expected to provide an initial assessment of bezisterim's potential in the condition.

Shares of BioVie had gained nearly 14% on Monday afternoon.

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. lifted its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 25.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 2,086,013 shares of the social networking company’s stock after purchasing an additional 422,753 shares during the quarter. Meta Platforms comprises approximately 2.3% of Daiwa Securities Group Inc.’s holdings, making the stock its 8th largest position. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. owned 0.08% of Meta Platforms worth $1,175,030,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. RHL Group LLC bought a new position in Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth about $28,000. Advantage Trust Co bought a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 2nd quarter valued at about $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC bought a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter valued at about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter worth about $29,000. Finally, Axiom Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the first quarter worth about $36,000. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.

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

Positive Sentiment: The settlement limits litigation risk by resolving claims from a broad coalition of states without an admission of liability. Analysts view the payment as manageable relative to Meta’s revenue and cash generation, while the company avoids potentially disruptive court-ordered changes to products such as Reels, Stories and its recommendation systems. Meta’s social media settlement leaves its money machine unscathed Positive Sentiment: Meta’s advertising engine continues to benefit from improved ad-ranking technology and growing advertiser use of artificial intelligence to create campaigns, supporting demand even as the company spends heavily on AI infrastructure. Ca$htag$: Meta’s AI Bet Not Showing Returns, Yet Positive Sentiment: Rosenblatt raised its price target to $886 and maintained a buy rating, pointing to substantial potential upside from current levels. The stock’s valuation also remains below that of many large technology peers, strengthening the bargain argument for some investors. Meta price target raised by Rosenblatt Neutral Sentiment: The new teen safeguards—including time limits, muted notifications and stronger parental controls—could become a regulatory template for TikTok, YouTube, Snap and international markets. This creates industrywide compliance costs, but may also give Meta greater legal clarity. Meta settlement puts social media industry on notice Negative Sentiment: Investors still face execution and financial risks: age-verification technology may be unreliable, critics say the protections do not address teen mental-health concerns, and regulators in the U.K., South Korea and elsewhere may demand similar measures. Restrictions could eventually reduce teen engagement and advertising opportunities. Meta’s child-safety deal and age verification Negative Sentiment: Meta’s substantial AI capital spending has not yet produced a proportionate revenue payoff, while an executive overseeing India and Southeast Asia is leaving for OpenAI. Those developments add to concerns about returns on investment and management stability. Meta executive leaves for OpenAI Meta Platforms Stock Performance NASDAQ:META opened at $578.02 on Monday. 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 simple moving average of $592.28 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $611.14. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.47 trillion, a PE ratio of 21.77, a P/E/G ratio of 1.00 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52-week low of $520.26 and a 52-week high of $790.80. 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 analysts’ consensus estimates of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a return on equity of 33.18% and a net margin of 29.83%.The firm had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $7.14 EPS. Meta Platforms’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 EPS for the current year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts have commented on the company. Weiss Ratings downgraded Meta Platforms from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research note on Friday, June 26th. Wolfe Research restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $700.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Scotiabank reaffirmed a “sector perform” rating and set a $600.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Erste Group Bank raised Meta Platforms from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 7th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group reduced their price objective on Meta Platforms from $815.00 to $725.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-four have given a Buy rating and nine have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.22.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Meta Platforms

Insider Activity In related news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,196 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $550.61, for a total value of $5,063,409.56. Following the sale, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,260,343.46. The trade was a 41.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the sale, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at $910,200. This represents a 45.33% 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 90 days, insiders have sold 32,987 shares of company stock valued at $19,202,995. Company 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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