Meta uzavřela dohodu s 47 státy, okresem Columbia a dalšími teritorii v hodnotě zhruba 17 miliard USD kvůli obviněním z ohrožování dětské bezpečnosti na sociálních sítích. Součástí jsou i nové bezpečnostní úpravy pro teenagery.
Six days before the start of a federal trial over online child safety, C.J. Mahoney, Meta’s chief legal officer, traveled to Nashville on Aug. 6 to meet with lawyers for about a dozen states. He wanted to broker an enormous settlement, two people familiar with the conversation said.
Meta had already suffered losses in court this year over claims it created addictive products that harmed young users. Mark Zuckerberg had endured a full day of grilling on the witness stand during one of those trials. (“You’re mischaracterizing this,” he kept repeating.) He was likely to be questioned again at the federal trial in California, in which a coalition of states had sued Meta, arguing that the company had contributed to a national child mental health crisis.
Over bagels and coffee in an Art Deco office on Tennessee’s Capitol grounds, Mr. Mahoney presented his terms, which Mr. Zuckerberg had personally approved, according to four people familiar with the negotiations. Meta would pay the states up to $19 billion and make changes to its platforms to improve teen safety. Some of the payment would be withheld unless all states joined and other social media companies also settled.
For the states attorney general in the room, the offer was intriguing. They had been negotiating with the Silicon Valley giant for months with little progress, the people said. On Tuesday, 47 states — two had dropped out of the lawsuit — the District of Columbia and several territories agreed to a settlement worth roughly $17 billion.
“There’s a saying here in Tennessee,” Jonathan Skrmetti, the state’s attorney general, said in one of the meetings with nearly all the state attorneys general, encouraging them not to get greedy. “Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered.”
The settlement, one of the largest agreements between a company and a group of states embroiled in litigation, was announced on Wednesday. This account of how it came together is based on a dozen interviews with state leaders, former and current Meta executives, court documents and trial testimony.
Mark Zuckerberg, center, Meta’s chief executive, outside a court in Los Angeles, where he testified in a lawsuit against the company in February. — Mark Abramson for The New York Times
For years, Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, seemed to have an impenetrable defense against child safety lawsuits. The company’s aces were Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that protects platforms from liability over what users post on their sites, and the First Amendment, which protects free speech.
But concerns have mounted globally over the harmful effects of social media on children. Australia last year became the first country to bar children under 16 from using social media, and many other countries carried out or are considering similar rules.
In the United States, a flood of online child safety lawsuits have been filed since 2022, and the plaintiffs focused on a new argument claiming that social media sites designed their products in a harmful way that violates consumer protection and other laws.
The suits accused the companies of knowingly creating sites that were as addictive as cigarettes, taking a page from a strategy used against Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Suddenly, relying on Section 230 didn’t look so safe.
A protest by parents against social media platforms outside the courthouse during Meta’s trial in Oakland, Calif., in August. — Noah Berger/Associated Press
At Meta, concern was growing about the cases, according to two people familiar with thinking inside the company.
In January, Meta hired Mr. Mahoney, a veteran litigator who had been general counsel at Microsoft. Mr. Mahoney, who reports directly to Mr. Zuckerberg, took the position of chief legal officer in part because he was attracted to the prospect of negotiating a settlement, one of the people familiar with Meta’s thinking said. He had negotiated complex deals in the past, most notably in 2020 when, as deputy U.S. trade representative, he was a lead negotiator of the Trump administration’s trade deal with Canada and Mexico.
Phil Weiser, the attorney general of Colorado, in Oakland in August. He met with Meta’s chief legal officer in January to begin settlement talks. — Noah Berger/Associated Press
Just days after starting his new job, Mr. Mahoney called Attorney General Phil Weiser of Colorado and Mr. Skrmetti of Tennessee, the lead negotiators for states, to begin settlement talks, four of the people familiar with the conversations said. Mr. Mahoney, who is based in Silicon Valley, flew out to meet them separately in their states. He wanted to explore a grand settlement that would end federal and state cases brought by all of the nation’s attorneys general.
The two sides had held previous talks. But the tenor of the conversations changed because Mr. Mahoney seemed so clearly interested in reaching a resolution.
But a roadblock immediately became apparent because Meta was reluctant to make some changes to its products, three of the people said. That was a nonstarter for many of the state attorneys general.
“We brought these suits because we wanted to protect kids and we wanted to reform the platforms,” Mr. Skrmetti said in an interview. Forcing changes to the platforms “is really the most significant part here.”
Every attorney general was familiar with an instance of a child’s facing harm from social media, Mr. Weiser said in an interview. “The shared commitment to do something was rooted in the pain that all of us recognize, the fears that all of us had,” he added.
The talks dragged. But within weeks, Meta received a harsh reminder of the potential problems ahead.
A young woman identified as K.G.M. took the stand at a trial that began in late January, making accusations that social media companies had created features on their platforms like infinite scroll that had led to her anxiety and depression.
The defendants, Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, had argued in pretrial hearings that the case should be scrapped because of Section 230. But the judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl of California Superior Court of Los Angeles County, ruled that the case was about product liability, not speech.
The five-week trial was deeply embarrassing for Meta. Mr. Zuckerberg testified for the first time about child safety in front of a jury. He was grilled about allowing millions of underage users on Instagram. Parents who said their children were harmed by social media packed the courtroom. Internal documents presented as evidence showed Meta’s employees comparing themselves to drug pushers.
Simultaneously, New Mexico’s attorney general was trying a case in state court charging Meta with violating consumer protection laws.
Supporters of K.G.M., the plaintiff in the Los Angeles trial that included testimony from Mr. Zuckerberg. — Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Within two days in March, Meta lost both cases. The decisions raised questions about reputational harm that future trials could inflict.
The stakes were getting higher, as Meta and California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey geared up for trial this summer in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland. The states had accused Meta of violating consumer protection laws and child privacy protections, seeking roughly $200 billion in penalties and changes to the company’s platforms.
Mr. Skrmetti and nearly all the other states attorney general had also filed their own cases.
But in the ongoing talks, Meta still wasn’t meeting all the states’ demands on safety features.
On the eve of the Oakland trial, Meta made a last-ditch effort to kill the case. The company asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on July 22 to throw out the social media addiction cases, invoking legal protections under Section 230.
As Meta waited for a decision from the Ninth Circuit, Mr. Mahoney trekked to Tennessee with his $19 billion offer. He left without a deal, but talks continued.
On Aug. 10, the appeals court ruled against Meta. Suddenly the talks sped up, four of the people said. With their new leverage, the states began daily negotiations with Meta’s lawyers in person in Nashville and over video calls, to get final concessions, one of the people said.
As part of the deal, the company agreed to more safety measures. The growing list of platform changes included stopping teenage users from endless scrolling, and imposing a two-hour daily limit on use of Instagram and Facebook. Meta also said it would limit teen use between midnight and 6 a.m. and silence notifications during school hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Meta proposed paying more and increasing limits on how much young users could use its platforms if other social media companies, like TikTok and YouTube, agreed to similar controls for their apps — something that Meta said would keep it from being singled out.
The company wanted to avoid going to trial, and had made it a condition that all the states needed to sign on. But on a video call to discuss the proposed settlement on Aug. 11, some state attorneys general asked if the money was enough and how it would be divided, five people with knowledge of the conversations said.
The states came up with an equation to divvy up the fund based on the size of their populations and the individual charges brought against Meta in each case.
The states’ case in Oakland went to trial last week while they were still negotiating with Meta. On Sunday, the Colorado and Tennessee attorneys general presented a final settlement deal to the other states. They emailed the document with instructions to sign by Tuesday at 6 p.m.
That day, Adam Mosseri. the head of Instagram, testified in Oakland. The states’ plan to call Mr. Zuckerberg to testify was looming.
On Tuesday, every state signed except Texas, Florida and New Mexico, ending the trial. New Mexico had already won its case, and Meta settled with Texas on Wednesday for about $1 billion, offering safety guardrails for young users similar to the multistate agreement.
“Section 230 and the First Amendment are not impenetrable shields to holding Meta accountable,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a call with reporters on Wednesday. The states’ settlement shows the limits of the abilities of those laws “to deliver justice and accountability” to “the people, children, families who’ve been harmed by misconduct.”
Mr. Mahoney said in a statement on Wednesday that he was proud of the agreement and the power it gave parents to protect their children.
“But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta’s lead,” he said.
Meta still faces thousands of other suits filed by teenagers, families and school districts. The next major personal injury trial is scheduled to be heard in California Superior Court of Los Angeles County in October.
Meta testuje roboty v datových centrech, které mají zvládat výměnu kabelů a další úkoly techniků. Firma tak zkouší snížit náklady na pracovní sílu při rozšiřování AI infrastruktury.
Meta is quietly testing robots inside its data centers, and at least one employee believes physical workers are no longer safe from automation. The experiment hints at a much larger shift in how AI spending could reshape labor costs across…
Artificial intelligence was supposed to make workers more productive. Instead, companies are increasingly discovering that the most productive worker can be one they don’t have to employ. U.S. technology companies have eliminated nearly 140,000 jobs in 2026, according to a Financial Times analysis, even as the industry’s AI spending reaches unprecedented levels.
Not every layoff can be blamed on AI — companies are also correcting pandemic-era excesses and cutting costs. But the direction of travel is difficult to miss. Now automation is moving beyond computer screens and into the physical world.
Meta’s Robots Are Coming for Data Center Jobs Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is already spending billions to build the infrastructure needed for its AI ambitions. Now it is exploring whether robots can help operate that infrastructure with fewer people.
According to a report from WIRED, Meta is testing robots that can swap networking cables, power-cycle servers, reseat hardware, and perform other tasks traditionally handled by data center technicians. The company is testing equipment from Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB at facilities including Altoona, Iowa, and New Albany, Ohio.
One Meta worker told WIRED that a successful cable-swapping robot could eventually replace up to 80% of some technicians’ workloads, according to one data center worker:
“We thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore. It’s coming for us all, unfortunately.”
The robots remain slower than humans in some applications, require supervision and battery charging, and struggle with complicated cabling. Still, the experiment matters because it attacks a cost that is becoming enormous as Meta expands its data center footprint.
Meta’s second-quarter 2026 results show just how much money is moving into that infrastructure. Revenue rose 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, while capital expenditures reached $31.1 billion in the quarter. The company now expects $130 billion to $145 billion of capital expenditures in 2026.
The most productive worker is the one you never have to hire. Automation has officially left the screen and entered the physical world, targeting a massive shift in the global workforce. AI Is Already Changing the Workforce. The Financial Times found that U.S. technology companies had gutted 140,000 jobs during 2026. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), Meta, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) accounted for almost 50,000 of those reductions. But the FT also cautioned that AI isn’t responsible for every job eliminated. Companies are restructuring, correcting previous overhiring, and redirecting spending toward AI infrastructure.
That’s an important distinction for investors. The bullish case for AI has always been that productivity gains will create new industries and new jobs, just as previous technological revolutions did. That could still happen. AI-focused companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are hiring, while Meta itself shifted thousands of employees toward AI-related work even as it reduced its overall workforce.
But AI has one unusual characteristic: speed and scalability. Software can replace tasks performed by thousands of people almost instantly once it works. Robotics could eventually do the same thing in the physical economy.
The $1.7 Trillion Opportunity Citizens Bank estimates that Tesla‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Optimus humanoid robot could eventually target roughly $1.7 trillion of U.S. wages. That’s not a forecast for Tesla’s revenue, and much of that potential market remains years away. But it illustrates why investors are paying attention to physical AI.
The economic incentive is straightforward. If a robot can work around the clock, doesn’t require benefits, and performs repetitive tasks consistently, its value isn’t merely that it replaces a worker. It changes the economics of the entire operation.
For Meta, that could eventually mean fewer technicians supporting vastly larger data centers. For Tesla, it could mean a new manufacturing and robotics business. For investors, it creates another way to measure AI’s potential: not just how much revenue it generates, but how much labor it can eliminate per dollar of capital invested.
Key Takeaway In short, investors shouldn’t interpret Meta’s robot experiments as proof that data center technicians are about to disappear. The technology isn’t there yet.
The more important signal is that AI automation is moving from white-collar software work to physical labor. Meta’s 2026 capital-spending budget shows how aggressively the company is building AI infrastructure, and robots could eventually help it operate that infrastructure more efficiently.
That makes the long-term thesis for Meta more compelling — but also changes the way investors should think about AI. The biggest gains may not come from selling AI products. They may come from using AI to require fewer humans to produce the same output.
That’s a much bigger productivity story. And, potentially, a much bigger margin story.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Elevated Private Wealth LLC ve 2. čtvrtletí koupila novou pozici v Meta Platforms: 2 779 akcií za zhruba 1,566 mil. USD. Podíl tvoří asi 1,5 % portfolia fondu.
Elevated Private Wealth LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund purchased 2,779 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,566,000. Meta Platforms makes up about 1.5% of Elevated Private Wealth LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 24th largest holding.
A number of other large investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. RHL Group LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth about $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at about $29,000. Advantage Trust Co purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 2nd quarter valued at about $28,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the first quarter worth about $36,000. Finally, Safe Harbor Fiduciary LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $42,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Key Headlines Impacting Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: The settlement limits litigation risk by resolving claims from a broad coalition of states without an admission of liability. Analysts view the payment as manageable relative to Meta’s revenue and cash generation, while the company avoids potentially disruptive court-ordered changes to products such as Reels, Stories and its recommendation systems. Meta’s social media settlement leaves its money machine unscathed Positive Sentiment: Meta’s advertising engine continues to benefit from improved ad-ranking technology and growing advertiser use of artificial intelligence to create campaigns, supporting demand even as the company spends heavily on AI infrastructure. Ca$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 Shares of META stock opened at $578.02 on Friday. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $592.28 and its two-hundred day moving average is $611.61. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.77, a PEG ratio of 0.99 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. 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 (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last posted 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 analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $7.14 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.17 earnings per share for the current year.
Analyst Ratings Changes Several brokerages recently weighed in on META. Mizuho set a $750.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial lowered their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $763.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday. Citizens Jmp dropped their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $770.00 and set a “market outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Benchmark restated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities lifted their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $883.00 to $886.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday. Four 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 stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.22.
Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on META
Insider Transactions at Meta Platforms In related news, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,848 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $558.00, for a total transaction of $4,379,184.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief technology officer owned 828 shares in the company, valued at $462,024. This represents a 90.46% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer directly 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 SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 34,957 shares of company stock worth $20,442,696 over the last 90 days. Company 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.
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Meta upravuje nastavení soukromí u chytrých brýlí a tvrdí, že kamera se nespustí, pokud je blokovaná LED kontrolka. Zároveň maže obsah i účty spojené se zneužíváním brýlí.
Meta wants to change the public's perception of its smart glasses. picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images The small camera installed in Meta's AI smart glasses has become a problem for the company and the public.
Photos and videos captured by Meta glasses have proliferated on social media, and not all of them are consensual. Clips of content creators harassing women and recording their reactions covertly have become a trend, raising concerns about privacy.
"Are you a secret code?" one male content creator asked a woman in an Instagram video. "Because I'm trying to crack you." Some social media users have dubbed Meta's product "pervert glasses."
It's all a bad look for Meta. So the company is making moves to get ahead of the negativity. It has recently publicized new privacy settings for its glasses and has launched a PR blitz to explain them.
Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth posted an Instagram video on Friday, for example, in which he explained how the smart glasses' hands-free camera works.
Alex Schultz talks about Meta Ray-Ban Glasses and its 'big breakthrough' with the SuperBowl
"We designed this camera to be noticed by the people around you, so in every pair of glasses we make, there's a capture LED on the front, and it lights up when someone's taking photos or videos for the gallery," Bosworth said.
Bosworth said the camera has no off switch. It stops working if people try to cover or deactivate it.
"We took this issue all the way across Meta, and we've been taking down content and even whole accounts connected to people misusing the glasses," Bosworth said.
Alex Himel, the vice president of wearables at Meta, also attempted to calm nerves on Friday in a Threads post. He said Meta's smart glasses will not allow users to record if the camera's LED light is blocked before or during recording.
"We're going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone's gallery," Himel said.
While the company has suspended accounts that use the cameras to harass people, Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos reported last week that it hasn't been able to catch them all.
Meta has taken strides to make their smart glasses a must-have accessory. The company has partnered with megastars like Kylie Jenner and Teyana Taylor, and it produced a star-studded Super Bowl LX ad to drum up hype.
As AI smart glasses become increasingly accessible, some event and venue organizers are taking a cautious approach with guests. Burning Man told attendees at the 2026 festival, which starts Monday, that they can bring smart glasses, but must get consent before filming anyone. New York City nightclub Basement updated its no-photo-and-video policy to include smart eyewear.
"Anyone bringing smart glasses into the venue, whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned," the venue said in an Instagram post on Friday.
Organizers for the DEFCON Hacking Conference told attendees in July that smart glasses and similar items are prohibited.
In his Instagram video, Bosworth urged users to watch for the LED light that indicates the cameras are recording.
"Please remember," he added, "the light is there for everyone."
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Lauren Edmonds is an award-winning reporter on the Business News team. When news isn't breaking, she covers personal finance, kitchen-table economics, and paths to financial freedom, including investing, real estate, side hustles, and small business. She also writes about guaranteed and universal basic income programs in the United States.Lauren has also covered lifestyle and entertainment, digital culture, and more. She has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and resides in New York City.Do you have an interesting story to tell? You can reach Lauren at [email protected] or on Signal at ledmonds0.07.Popular StoriesNetflix wants to be Disney when it grows up Why Hollywood is paying this 17-year-old up to $20,000 to boost film trailers with TikTok editsHere's all the free money Trump's talked about giving Americans during his second term — and where it all standsA 17-year-old earned $72,000 after investing his e-commerce profits into stocks. Here's why he bet on the tech industry.Lawmakers float a nationwide basic income experiment that would cover the cost of a 2-bedroom apartmentNearly 30,000 Americans have received about $335 million in basic income. Here are 5 takeaways. Americans ditch suffocating healthcare costs and divisive politics to retire in Italy: 'It's the way they approach life'From 'road-schooling' to gas that costs $500, this family of 4 shares what it's like living in a solar-powered Greyhound bus
Meta ve 2. čtvrtletí zvýšila tržby o 28 % na 60,8 miliardy USD, ale zisk na akcii klesl o 13 % na 6,18 USD. Firma zároveň očekává ve 3. čtvrtletí asi 10 miliard USD právních nákladů kvůli vyrovnání.
Meta Platforms (META +1.21%) stock peaked more than a year ago. The record close of $790.00 came on Aug. 12, 2025 (shares briefly traded as high as $796.25 three days later), and the stock, trading for about $579 as of this writing, sits about 27% below that mark.
In between came an expensive year: capital spending plans that kept climbing, a quarter of falling earnings, and a landmark legal settlement.
Here's my prediction anyway. Meta stock closes above that record before 2029.
That call doesn't require the stock's price-to-earnings ratio to rise. Getting back to the record by the end of 2028 requires about 36% appreciation, which works out to about 14% a year. And Meta's core business is already growing considerably faster than that.
Image source: Getty Images.
The ads business is still compounding fastWhatever the stock has done, the advertising business is still compounding fast. Meta's second-quarter revenue rose 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, or 27% on a constant-currency basis. That's a step down from the first quarter's 33% growth, but volume and pricing are both still climbing. Ad impressions increased 14% year over year, while the average price per ad rose 12%. The company's apps now reach 3.60 billion daily active people, up 3%.
Why is the stock down, then? Because the bottom line hasn't kept up.
Costs and expenses in the second quarter jumped 55% year over year to $42.0 billion, dragging its operating margin down to 31% from 43% a year earlier. Diluted earnings per share fell 13% to $6.18.
To be fair, the quarter absorbed $2.4 billion of charges tied to legal proceedings and $1.18 billion of severance from a May headcount reduction -- about $3.6 billion of items that shouldn't repeat. The more durable weight is the build-out itself. Meta expects 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion for artificial intelligence (AI) and its core business, a range whose floor it raised in July.
Then, last week, Meta agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion to settle claims from a coalition of state attorneys general that it misled the public about its apps' harms to teenagers, plus a separate $1 billion agreement with Texas. It has been a long time since this company gave the market an uncomplicated quarter.
The math, at today's multipleStill, the prediction doesn't need an uncomplicated quarter. It needs math. Shares trade at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 17, based on expected 2027 earnings. For the stock to sit at $790.00 at that same valuation multiple, the earnings the market is pricing in would need to be about 36% higher than today's -- mid-teens annual earnings growth between now and the end of 2028. No multiple expansion required.
For a business growing revenue 28%, that could prove a modest ask.
One more charge comes first, though: Meta says it expects to book about $10 billion of legal expense in the third quarter to cover the settlement, a cost it hadn't built into its prior outlook. But charges like that end. The settlement converts an open-ended legal risk into a mostly known number -- about $12.7 billion of a roughly $18 billion package going to the states over 10 years, with the remaining $5.3 billion contingent on rival platforms accepting similar terms. And the severance reflects a company cutting headcount while revenue compounds -- the reported 75,472 still counts about 8,000 people cut in May, most of them gone by the end of this quarter.
The spending has to pay offThe honest risk to this forecast is the same thing that knocked the stock down in the first place. Capital spending of $130 billion to $145 billion this year becomes depreciation for years afterward, and depreciation lands directly on the earnings line.
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If total expenses keep growing anywhere near 55% while revenue grows 28%, earnings won't compound in the mid-teens. They'll keep shrinking, and the math above falls apart. Second-quarter free cash flow of $784 million, down from $8.5 billion a year earlier, shows how much of the profit the build-out is consuming.
But CEO Mark Zuckerberg's claim that "AI is accelerating our core business today" is showing up in the numbers, at least on the revenue line. Ad prices rising 12% while impressions grow 14% is what an effective AI advertising system looks like. The spending has a return attached, and the question is timing.
Will Meta see its record again before 2029?
I believe it will. The required return is about 14% a year, the advertising business is compounding at twice that rate, and the stock's forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 17 is a modest price for this kind of growth.
If 2027 arrives with expenses still growing twice as fast as revenue, I'd rethink the call. Until then, I'd rather own the stock.
Meta v pondělí odpoledne vzrostla asi o 1,5 % na 557,875 USD, protože růst reklamy převážil obavy z AI. Tržby ve 2. čtvrtletí vyskočily o 28 % na 60,8 miliardy USD.
Meta Platforms META , the social-media, digital-advertising and artificial-intelligence powerhouse, climbed approximately 1.5% to $557.875 Monday afternoon while semiconductor selling dragged the Nasdaq lower. That divergence matters. Investors were buying Meta's proven AI revenue machine while dumping technology companies carrying heavier expectations.
The numbers explain the confidence. Second-quarter revenue rocketed 28% to $60.8 billion as AI-powered advertising tools lifted engagement and pricing. Then came the gut punch: free cash flow crashed 91% to $784 million as Meta accelerated its infrastructure spending.
At roughly 21 times trailing earnings, Meta remains cheaper than several mega-cap rivals growing more slowly. The valuation gap looks enormous, with the $557.875 share price sitting 33.74% below the $841.91 GF Value™ estimate. But cheap does not mean painless. Capital expenditures are exploding, and a multistate youth-safety trial could force changes to the recommendation systems that keep users scrolling. For now, the advertising engine is winning the argument.
Nový Zéland zvažuje zákaz sociálních sítí pro uživatele mladší 16 let a pokuty až do 10 % globálních tržeb pro platformy, které pravidla poruší. To zvyšuje regulační riziko pro Meta a Alphabet.
Platforms could face fines of up to 10% of global revenue.
Meta Platforms Inc. (META, Financials) and Alphabet Inc. may face another regulatory issue. The New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claimed his party will introduce social media bans for under-16s.
The suggested fines make this crucial for investors. According to Reuters, noncompliant platforms might be fined 10% of global revenue.
The measure would compel corporations to reasonably verify users' ages using account information, face technology, and digital identity documents. That would highlight Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Not only New Zealand would act. Australia banned under-16 social media, a model other countries could follow as kid safety and online addiction concerns grow.
One crucial note. The New Zealand idea is not yet legislation and may not pass. Luxon's coalition partner New Zealand First has opposed the bill. Travel direction matters.
If additional countries adopt age restrictions with substantial financial penalties, social media businesses may face increased compliance costs and fewer ways to entice younger members. Meta and Alphabet may face a wider regulatory risk from a local policy struggle.
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.
Meta ve 2. čtvrtletí 2026 zvýšila reklamní tržby o 27 % na 59,4 mld. USD. AI nástroje zvedly počet kliknutí na reklamy na Facebooku o 8,3 % a konverze o 15,7 %.
Key Takeaways Meta's ad revenues rose 27% to $59.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026. AI tools lifted Facebook ad clicks 8.3% and conversions 15.7% in the quarter. Reddit and Snap also posted ad growth, rising 64% and 9%, respectively, in Q2. Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) is benefiting from strong growth in its advertising business, strengthening its competitive position against Reddit (RDDT - Free Report) and Snap (SNAP - Free Report) . The company’s AI-driven ad tools, expanding user engagement and large advertiser base continue to drive higher ad spending across its family of apps.
In the second quarter of 2026, Meta reported $59.4 billion in ad revenues, up 27% year over year, with a 14% increase in ad impressions and a 12% rise in average price per ad. This growth is underpinned by Meta’s ability to deliver highly engaging experiences across its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, reaching 3.6 billion daily active users.
A key driver behind this success is Meta Platforms’ investment in artificial intelligence, particularly large language models that enhance content recommendations and ad targeting. These AI-powered systems allow Meta Platforms to show more relevant content and ads, resulting in higher conversions and better performance for advertisers.
In the second quarter of 2026, the deployment of Meta Generative Recommender and other advanced models led to an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook. More than 9 million small businesses now use at least one of Meta’s AI-powered ad creative tools. Its Advantage+ AI-powered advertising solutions also surpassed a $75 billion annual revenue run rate in the quarter, highlighting growing advertiser adoption.
Meta expects continued gains from AI-powered recommendations and advertising optimization. With strong user engagement, expanding AI capabilities and a massive advertiser base, META appears well-positioned to maintain its advertising momentum and stay ahead of RDDT and SNAP. For the third quarter of 2026, Meta expects revenues between $61 billion and $64 billion.
How Competitors Fare Against METADespite Meta Platforms’ expanding portfolio, the company faces stiff competition from Reddit and Snap. Both companies are expanding their footprint in the rapidly growing digital ad market.
Reddit is benefiting from strong demand in its advertising business, which has become a key growth driver of the company’s impressive financial performance and future growth prospects. In the second quarter of 2026, Reddit’s advertising revenues grew 64% year over year to $762 million, outpacing even its impressive total revenue growth of 61%. This growth is broad-based, with strength across various sales channels, including large customers, mid-market and small and medium-sized businesses.
Snap’s strong advertising revenue has been a major growth driver for the company. In the second quarter of 2026, Snap’s advertising revenues rose 9% year over year to $1.28 billion, reflecting improved momentum with large advertisers in North America, broader adoption of the company’s AI-powered Smart Campaign Solutions and continued strength among small and medium-sized businesses.
META’s Share Price Performance, Valuation, and EstimatesMETA’s shares have lost 16.7% in the year-to-date period, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 15.6%.
META Stock Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
META shares are cheap, with a forward 12-month Price/Sales of 4.87X compared with the Computer & Technology sector’s 6.36X. META has a Value Score of B.
META Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings is pegged at $31.90 per share, which has decreased 3.47% over the past 30 days. This suggests 35.80% year-over-year growth.
Meta Platforms currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Florida Trust Wealth Management Co reduced its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 9.4% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 46,914 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 4,881 shares during the period. Florida Trust Wealth Management Co’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $26,426,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in META. First National Bank Sioux Falls boosted its position in 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 during the period. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. increased its position 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 buying an additional 14 shares during the period. Vista Capital Partners Inc. increased its position 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 buying an additional 14 shares during the period. Arcataur Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.9% in the fourth quarter. Arcataur Capital Management LLC now owns 1,736 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,146,000 after buying an additional 15 shares during the last quarter. Finally, 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 last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.
Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts have recently commented on META shares. Phillip Securities upgraded shares of Meta Platforms to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, August 3rd. UBS Group cut their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock 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 research note on Thursday, July 30th. Roth Capital restated a “buy” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Thursday, April 30th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus decreased their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $805.00 to $780.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, May 1st. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.32.
Get Our Latest Stock Report on META Meta Platforms Price Performance NASDAQ META opened at $549.90 on Monday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $593.51 and its two-hundred day moving average is $614.77. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.40 trillion, a P/E ratio of 20.71, a P/E/G ratio of 0.94 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.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued 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). The firm had revenue of $60.80 billion during 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 revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $7.14 EPS. On average, research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 7.91%.
Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total value of $2,012,047.56. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 9,498 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,708,013.06. This represents a 26.06% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, May 27th. The stock was sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total transaction of $1,268,023.68. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares in the company, valued at $681,890.56. This trade represents a 65.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 38,502 shares of company stock valued at $22,603,485. Insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.
Key Headlines Impacting Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Pocket in the U.S., an AI-powered app that lets users create and share interactive games through text prompts. The product could increase engagement and expand Meta’s consumer AI ecosystem. Meta brings Pocket to U.S. users Positive Sentiment: Meta introduced a Mac app for Meta AI with system-wide dictation and screen-aware assistance. The company is also pricing its new Muse Code coding agent below Anthropic and OpenAI offerings, potentially helping it attract developers and build AI adoption. Meta AI launches Mac app Positive Sentiment: Meta’s core advertising business remains strong, with quarterly revenue rising 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. AI-related improvements to recommendations and ad delivery are supporting engagement, clicks and conversion efficiency. Meta drawdown analysis Neutral Sentiment: Meta is contesting the Federal Trade Commission’s effort to revive monopoly charges. The company argues that Facebook and Instagram users increasingly see recommended content rather than posts from friends, a defense that could influence the case’s regulatory implications. Meta fights FTC monopoly charges Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, CFO Susan Li and insider Curtis Mahoney sold shares worth roughly $10.3 million in aggregate under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans. The transactions are limited as discretionary signals but may still affect investor sentiment. Meta insider transaction filing Negative Sentiment: Child-safety and social-media addiction litigation is intensifying. Testimony alleging that some safety tools were “designed to fail” raises the possibility of major damages, mandated product changes, restrictions on engagement features and pressure on advertising monetization. Meta social media lawsuit trial Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that heavier AI capital spending will depress second-half free cash flow and increase financial pressure. Those concerns follow Meta’s quarterly EPS miss, despite its revenue beat, and have contributed to the stock’s year-to-date weakness. Meta stock investment analysis 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.
Read More Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms VIG, VYM, and VYMI: Which Vanguard Dividend ETF Is Right for You? 3 Closed-End Funds to Maximize Dividend Payments Rocket Lab’s Sell-Off Is Fading—Is It Finally Safe to Buy? $27 Billion in Buybacks: 3 Stocks Betting Their Strong Runs Aren’t Over 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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Capstone Wealth Management Group ve 2. čtvrtletí nakoupila nový podíl v Meta Platforms za zhruba 1,869 milionu USD. Meta zůstává 19. největší pozicí v portfoliu firmy.
Capstone Wealth Management Group Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm bought 3,317 shares of the social networking company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,869,000. Meta Platforms comprises 1.1% of Capstone Wealth Management Group Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 19th largest holding.
Other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC raised its stake in Meta Platforms by 17.4% during the 1st quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 18,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $10,299,000 after buying an additional 2,670 shares during the last quarter. Keybank National Association OH lifted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 15.7% during the 4th quarter. Keybank National Association OH now owns 133,798 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $88,319,000 after buying an additional 18,169 shares during the period. WMS Group LLC purchased a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter worth $876,000. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of 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 buying an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Czech National Bank grew its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 4.9% in the second quarter. Czech National Bank now owns 625,079 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $352,101,000 after acquiring an additional 29,411 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Analysts Set New Price Targets META has been the subject of a number of research reports. Raymond James Financial upped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $825.00 to $850.00 and gave the company a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 21st. Citigroup dropped their target price on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. KeyCorp cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $790.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Wedbush reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $671.00 to $595.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $640.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.32.
Check Out Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms Meta Platforms Price Performance NASDAQ META opened at $549.90 on Monday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $593.51 and its 200 day moving average is $614.77. 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 capitalization of $1.40 trillion, a PE ratio of 20.71, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.94 and a beta of 1.25.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly 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 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 company earned $7.14 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts predict that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is 7.91%.
Key Meta Platforms News Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Pocket in the U.S., an AI-powered app that lets users create and share interactive games through text prompts. The product could increase engagement and expand Meta’s consumer AI ecosystem. Meta brings Pocket to U.S. users Positive Sentiment: Meta introduced a Mac app for Meta AI with system-wide dictation and screen-aware assistance. The company is also pricing its new Muse Code coding agent below Anthropic and OpenAI offerings, potentially helping it attract developers and build AI adoption. Meta AI launches Mac app Positive Sentiment: Meta’s core advertising business remains strong, with quarterly revenue rising 28% year over year to $60.8 billion. AI-related improvements to recommendations and ad delivery are supporting engagement, clicks and conversion efficiency. Meta drawdown analysis Neutral Sentiment: Meta is contesting the Federal Trade Commission’s effort to revive monopoly charges. The company argues that Facebook and Instagram users increasingly see recommended content rather than posts from friends, a defense that could influence the case’s regulatory implications. Meta fights FTC monopoly charges Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, CFO Susan Li and insider Curtis Mahoney sold shares worth roughly $10.3 million in aggregate under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans. The transactions are limited as discretionary signals but may still affect investor sentiment. Meta insider transaction filing Negative Sentiment: Child-safety and social-media addiction litigation is intensifying. Testimony alleging that some safety tools were “designed to fail” raises the possibility of major damages, mandated product changes, restrictions on engagement features and pressure on advertising monetization. Meta social media lawsuit trial Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that heavier AI capital spending will depress second-half free cash flow and increase financial pressure. Those concerns follow Meta’s quarterly EPS miss, despite its revenue beat, and have contributed to the stock’s year-to-date weakness. Meta stock investment analysis Insider Buying and Selling In other Meta Platforms news, 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 transaction of $4,379,184.00. Following the sale, the chief technology officer owned 828 shares in the company, valued at approximately $462,024. This trade represents a 90.46% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on 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 directly owned 1,517 shares in the company, valued at $910,200. This represents a 45.33% 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. Insiders sold a total of 38,502 shares of company stock worth $22,603,485 in the last ninety days. 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.
Read More Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms VIG, VYM, and VYMI: Which Vanguard Dividend ETF Is Right for You? 3 Closed-End Funds to Maximize Dividend Payments Rocket Lab’s Sell-Off Is Fading—Is It Finally Safe to Buy? $27 Billion in Buybacks: 3 Stocks Betting Their Strong Runs Aren’t Over
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Mark Zuckerberg zveřejnil 6 500 slovný manifest, v němž Meta Platforms obhajuje rozsáhlé budování agentní AI. Cílem je rozšířit příjmy mimo reklamu, která ve 2. čtvrtletí tvořila 97,6 % tržeb.
Meta Platforms (META +0.75%) CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a 6,500-word manifesto detailing how the company will make agentic artificial intelligence (AI) a mainstream resource.
"Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about," Zuckerberg said in his open letter.
Superintelligence can revolutionize industries and give consumers access to more valuable tools, but what about investors? Here's how the company's efforts to double down on its AI buildout will affect shareholders.
Image source: Getty Images.
Superintelligence can diversify Meta Platforms' revenue It's no secret that Meta Platforms makes almost all of its revenue from online advertising. It represented 97.6% of total revenue in the second quarter, with "Other revenue" and Reality Labs making up the remaining sliver.
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Meta Platforms has been trying to diversify beyond online advertising for several years. Other tech rivals like Amazon and Alphabet have diversified into multiple industries, with online advertising still playing a key role.
Meta Platforms fumbled with the metaverse, and subscription revenue hasn't been moving the needle much. AI agents can initiate the revenue diversification Meta Platforms has been seeking for years. A push into neocloud services, which Zuckerberg floated earlier this year, can also aid the company in unlocking new income streams.
This development can make the company less reliant on advertising, which is still a fast-growing segment. The stock only trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 20, which is a low valuation just for the online advertising component. Any meaningful commercial progress with the superintelligence buildout can trigger a big rally, especially if online advertising revenue growth rates remain elevated.
Meta Platforms is still losing a lot of money on AI Meta Platforms is still doing fine. Revenue jumped by 28% year over year in the second quarter. Operating income dipped by 8% year over year, but it may be a small price to pay if diversification efforts pay off.
"If" is the big problem here. The Metaverse debacle was a few years ago, but high capital expenditures without the payoff can bring that memory back. Reality Labs produced a $4.6 billion operating loss in the second quarter, while online advertising operating income slightly decreased year-over-year.
Although Meta Platforms doesn't face many competitors in the AI landscape, a few hyperscalers can quickly secure a large portion of the market. For instance, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet control more than 60% of the cloud computing market. Oracle, the fourth-largest cloud provider, only has a 4% market share. A similar setup with AI agents that doesn't include Meta Platforms at or near the top can make it harder to justify increased spending.
Big investments in AI are necessary for the company to keep up with other tech leaders and finally diversify beyond online advertising. Meta Platforms is correctly acting upon this opportunity, but it must translate this spending into commercial success while pivoting back to positive operating income growth rates to reignite the stock.
Marc Guberti has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Oracle. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Meta v USA čelí žalobě 29 států kvůli údajnému sběru dat o dětech a návykovému designu svých produktů. V případě prohry jí hrozí odškodné až 200 miliard USD.
Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company.
The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on its platforms for as long as possible, “harvests” their data and then “hides” the truth from the public, she argued.
“Meta’s business model worked especially well for kids,” said Megan O’Neill, a lawyer for the state of California.
Her accusation opened the blockbuster trial against the US tech company on Tuesday in Oakland, California, just north of Meta’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. California has joined 28 other US states in suing the £1tn ($1.36tn) company for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to children being harmed.
Lennon Torres of Heat Initiative holds a banner with the names of young people who died as a result of social media outside the Ronald V Dellums federal building on 18 August. Photograph: Noah Berger/APEight jurors heard from O’Neill and attorneys for Meta this week, along with testimony from former employees and a psychologist. The lawsuit centers on allegations that the company violated US federal child privacy laws and state-level consumer protection laws by collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental permission. Over the course of the trial, the jury is additionally expected to hear from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.
The threat to Meta is existential. If the company is found liable, damages could be as high as $200bn – an amount equivalent to the company’s 2025 annual revenue. The states are also asking that Meta be forced to change the design of its products to make them safer for children, which could have permanent effects on the company’s business model and how its social media platforms operate.
Meta has denied all allegations. Liza Crenshaw, a spokesperson for the company, said: “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”
During opening statements, Paul Schmidt, an attorney for Meta, said there is “no dispute” people can struggle with social media, but that Meta had “come up with tools to try and address that”. He added the company does not allow children under the age of 13 to register for accounts on its social networks and that it had disabled more than 1m accounts of those young users.
Paul Schmidt, lead attorney for Meta, leaves the courthouse as Meta is on trial over social media addiction in Oakland on 19 August. Photograph: Karl Mondon/AFP/Getty ImagesThe trial is expected to last six to eight weeks. The proceedings will be led by attorneys for the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The jury’s role is advisory, which means they will give recommendations to the presiding judge, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will make the final decision on the verdict and damages.
Meta faces thousands of similar US lawsuits brought by families, school districts and other attorneys general. The company lost the first two of those cases to go to trial in March. In the first, the company was ordered to pay nearly $1bn to the state of New Mexico for allowing child sexual exploitation on its platforms; and in the second, it was found liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked one young woman and was ordered to pay her more than $4m.
The star witness to take the stand in the trial’s first week was Arturo Béjar, a safety engineer at Meta who worked there in two separate stints between 2009 and 2021. Since leaving, Béjar has been an outspoken critic of the company, testifying before a US Senate committee and serving as an expert witness in other cases that involve social media’s harm to children.
In Oakland, Béjar testified that his motivation for pursuing solutions for harms to children was his own teenage daughter’s treatment on Instagram. He said she received unwanted sexual advances and photos of male genitals as well as misogynistic insults. Later, she told her father that reporting these abuses through Instagram’s established processes was either ineffective or not possible.
“Meta is taking a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ strategy” when it comes to child safety, Béjar testified.
Arturo Bejar, a former Meta safety engineer and consultant, leaves the courthouse as Meta faces trial over claims that they illegally collected and used children’s data. Photograph: Manuel Orbegozo/ReutersBéjar said that his job often included briefing Zuckerberg and that he had spoken with the CEO more than 100 times in the course of his work.
During Béjar’s testimony, attorneys for the government showed the jury an email he sent Zuckerberg in 2021, which outlined a survey he had conducted of teens’ experiences on Instagram. The results showed 51% of users said “yes” to having bad or harmful experiences within the previous seven days and that content was taken down only 0.02% of the time.
Béjar testified he sent that data to Zuckerberg because, “in my experience, when Mark makes something a priority, mountains move.”
“Did he ever respond to you?” the attorney asked.
“No,” Béjar replied. “I didn’t hear back from him.”
Meta fought to bar Béjar from testifying at the trial, filing a series of motions to strike his exhibits and prevent him from taking the stand, all of which were rejected. In an email to reporters on Wednesday, Meta continued to hound him. The company’s statement said Béjar’s testimony was not credible or reliable because he overinflated his role at the company and took credit for work he didn’t do.
After Béjar’s testimony wrapped, the jury heard recorded depositions from Elena Davis and Natalie Troxel – both former user experience researchers for Meta. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, also briefly took the stand, with testimony scheduled to continue next week.
Meta v pátek ráno vzrostla přibližně o 0,6 % na 549,33 USD, protože investoři přehlížejí hrozbu žaloby až o 200 miliard USD. Tržby ve druhém čtvrtletí stouply o 28 % na 60,8 miliardy USD.
, the social-media and artificial-intelligence juggernaut, climbed approximately 0.6% to $549.33 Friday morning as mega-cap growth stocks fought back. But Meta's rebound comes with a legal grenade still rolling across the floor. Investors must weigh a roaring advertising business against a youth-safety trial that could force painful changes to its biggest platforms.
Twenty-nine states are challenging Meta over children's data and allegedly addictive product features. The possible penalty has been estimated at approximately $200 billion, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the money machine keeps humming. Second-quarter revenue exploded 28% to $60.8 billion. The ugly number was free cash flow, which crashed 91% to only $784 million as Meta opened the spending floodgates for AI.
A massive fine would sting. A forced redesign of recommendations, infinite scroll or youth engagement could hurt far more because it would strike directly at Meta's advertising engine. Yet the stock sits 34.64% below its GF Value estimate of $840.41. That is a monster valuation gap—but investors are being paid to absorb monster-sized legal risk and an AI spending spree that is devouring cash.
Meta dál masivně investuje do AI, ale Bernstein vidí hlavní oporu v růstu tržeb asi o 28 % meziročně a v prvních známkách zpeněžování. Analytik drží doporučení Outperform a cílovou cenu 800 USD.
Meta Platforms Inc. (META, Financials), the parent of Facebook and Instagram, continues to spend aggressively on artificial intelligence, but Bernstein thinks investors may be looking too much at the expense and not enough at what could go right.
Analyst Mark Shmulik maintained an Outperform rating and $800 price target, saying Meta's core business is still robust enough to support the AI drive. Revenue is still growing roughly 28% year over year, with early evidence of AI monetization starting to come in business messaging, paid model APIs and subscriptions.
That matters because Meta doesn't need every AI project to be a big moneymaker. Bernstein, however, believes that one good consumer AI success may do a lot to improve mood among investors and make today's spending look a lot more justified.
There is still a lot of execution risk. Meta is likely to continue heavy expenditure on AI models, personnel and infrastructure at least through 2027. But the valuation is helping.
Bernstein thinks the stock already represents much of the uncertainties around that investment, at about 15 times next year's earnings. The scenario for investors is really simple: Meta's primary advertising engine is still growing rapidly, and the business is starting to show that AI might someday lead to new sources of income, not just a cost center.
Meta čelí soudu, který může nařídit odstranění „návykových“ prvků z Instagramu a Facebooku, včetně nekonečného scrollování a Stories. Verdikt by mohl zásadně změnit sociální sítě i reklamní model firmy.
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Meta says it faces a trillion-dollar penalty and damage to its advertising model. But the trial could go well beyond one company. It could make social media unrecognizable.
The states want the court to force Meta to remove "certain addictive design features" from its platforms, Instagram and Facebook. These include infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, disappearing content such as Instagram Stories, beauty filters, and algorithm-dominated feeds.
During her opening statements on Tuesday, California's deputy attorney general, Megan O'Neill, said that Meta is choosing profit over safety, hiding the "reality" of under-13s on its platforms, and that its business model is to "hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public."
"This trial is potentially the end of social media as we know it," Kate Winick, a principal analyst at Forrester, said.
"Any verdict against Meta would set a massive precedent," Winick added. "These trials are often compared to the Big Tobacco lawsuits of the 90s, and the outcome will likely be analogous as well: the product is going to be harder for young people to access and the cultural message around social media is going to change."
And California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Meta is just the "first in line," as various U.S. state attorneys general take social-media companies to court over harms. There are pending lawsuits against YouTube and Snap too.
"Who goes first? Who goes last? Ideally, they all go at the same time," Bonta said. "That's not possible. In an ideal world, they would all commit to the same reforms and changes to all kids and keep them safe."
watch now
Meta and YouTube were already found negligent in a blockbuster social media addiction trial in Los Angeles in March, in which the plaintiff was a young woman who said she became addicted to their apps as a child. She said the platforms' design caused her severe body dysmorphia, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Winick predicted that other social media platforms like Snap, which has a younger user base, would likely make "preemptive changes" to align with any changes forced on Meta by the trial.
"It's unlikely that this will permanently kill the industry, but it will significantly reduce usage over the long term as young users fail to be introduced to the platforms," she added.
"The real existential threat to Meta and social media as an industry is if similar lawsuits follow from adults alleging the same problems and effects," Winick said.
News editOpenAI rolls out ChatGPT for Teens, a dedicated chatbot experience for users under 18 that has "stronger built-in safety protections."
Alibaba's AI spending spree drove a 75% drop in net income for the June quarter.
OpenAI's chief financial officer told employees that the company will go public by 2027 if not sooner.
Amazon plans to offer drone deliveries in nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of the year.
AI data center outrage is showing up everywhere from ads to elections, as the facilities have become a physical manifestation of the widespread antipathy for AI.
One more thingNvidia is playing matchmaker, trying to connect companies with its graphics processing units to data-center operators that have the capacity to deploy them in the Nordics, sources told CNBC's Kai Nicol-Schwarz.
It comes as the chip giant attempts to expand its influence over the AI ecosystem in the race to build out infrastructure.
Two sources familiar with the matter said Nvidia has offered to connect Nordic data center operators with companies using its GPUs that are seeking additional capacity.
Mark Zuckerberg naznačil, že Meta brzy uvede mnohem schopnější AI modely. Firma zároveň dál masivně zvyšuje kapitálové výdaje na vývoj vlastních modelů.
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Journalist Alex Heath, co-founder of the Sources newsletter and a longtime Meta chronicler, argued on CNBC this morning that investors are underestimating how close Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is to shipping frontier-class AI models. His reporting, drawn from a recent conversation with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reframes the debate around Meta’s aggressive capital spending at a moment when the stock is under pressure.
Heath said Zuckerberg told him the reason he published his recent AI policy op-ed was to establish his values before Meta unveils more powerful AI models: “He told me… that the reason he wrote that is he wanted to state the values he has before Meta releases much more capable models in the near future.“
Heath interprets that framing as a strategic signal about Meta’s direction. “That, to me, was a pretty definitive statement that he thinks that’s going to happen in the near future, and you’ve seen them catch up pretty quickly over the last year.”
Why Investors Are Punishing Meta’s $145 Billion AI Bet Meta shares currently trade around $546.35 as of this morning, with the stock down 15.46% over the past month and 17.14% year to date. The pullback followed a Q2 2026 earnings report with higher-than-expected capex costs.
Q2 capital expenditures were $31.1 billion, and management raised the 2026 capex outlook to $130-$145 billion. Total 2026 expenses are guided to $165 to $169 billion. Free cash flow fell to just $784 million in the quarter, a figure that has fueled Reddit debates.
Q2 revenue reached $60.8 billion, up 28%, but GAAP operating margin compressed to 31%, and diluted EPS of $6.18 came in below Street consensus. A widely shared post argued investors were looking at the wrong number, noting that operating cash flow still grew 25%.
What All That Capex Spending May Actually Be Buying What, specifically, is all this spending buying? On the Q2 call, Zuckerberg defended proprietary model development directly. “Right now, the open source models are not as strong as the frontier models,” he said, adding that “having kind of sovereignty over building your own models is going to be an important part of that stack going forward.”
Zuckerberg also said Meta is “in the process of scaling much larger and more advanced models” beyond the early scaling ladder of MuseSpark 1.1 and related releases. He argued the real prize is a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly.
What to Watch Next Meta still needs to prove that its unprecedented AI spending can produce frontier models and attractive financial returns. Zuckerberg’s comments offer no firm timeline, but they suggest the company may be closer to a breakthrough than investors realize.
With Meta trading at 19 times forward earnings after a 17% year-to-date decline, any convincing model announcement at September’s Connect event on September 23 could quickly change the narrative. Analysts have an average price target of $754.14, with 47 Buy and 8 Strong Buy ratings against 7 Hold calls.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Analytik BNP Paribas Nick Jones očekává, že Meta z investic do AI časem získá výrazný růst tržeb, což podpoří reklamu i marže. Meta zároveň plánuje v září začít vyrábět vlastní čipy MTIA.
Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stock traded higher by almost 1% during Thursday’s premarket session as risk appetite firms up into the open. Nasdaq futures are up 0.56% while S&P 500 futures have gained 0.09%.
The Big Tech giant is scaling its AI infrastructure and developing new ways to monetize artificial intelligence as it looks to strengthen advertising growth, expand revenue sources and eventually improve margins despite elevated capital spending.
Jones Sees AI Driving Top-Line GrowthBNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones expects Meta to continue delivering robust revenue growth as it monetizes its AI investments.
The analyst reiterated an Outperform rating on Meta with an $855 price forecast, implying about 57% upside from the stock’s Aug. 18 price of $543.70.
He said Meta’s aggressive AI investments could generate “abundant revenue” over time, helping justify the company’s rising capital spending.
He sees durable growth in the company’s core advertising business, complemented over time by subscription revenue, a potential cloud offering and fees from allowing external customers to use Meta’s AI models.
Jones said Meta currently needs all of its computing capacity internally and does not expect excess capacity in the near term.
Management views monetizing AI intelligence as financially more attractive than selling raw computing power.
Meta could offer cloud capacity if its internal requirements fall short of expectations, although management expects any such arrangements to remain short-term or strategic.
SMB Advertising Offers Another Growth OpportunityJones highlighted Meta’s opportunity among small and medium-sized businesses.
Management believes AI-powered tools can help smaller companies create more personalized advertising at scale, potentially unlocking additional digital advertising spending.
Meta also continues to see robust advertising demand despite some macroeconomic pressures.
Meta Builds Its Own AI ChipsThe company plans to begin manufacturing its internally designed Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chips in September.
It currently uses MTIA for inference workloads that improve recommendations and rankings, with plans to broaden its applications over time.
Jones Expects Profits and Margins to ImproveJones expects Meta’s capital expenditures to continue expanding through 2027 but believes the investments will generate enough revenue over time to justify that spending.
Meta management expects operating income to increase in dollar terms in 2026, although results may fluctuate from year to year.
Combined with continued cost discipline, Jones expects margin expansion to resume as AI-driven revenue growth scales.
Analyst Consensus & Recent Actions: Meta Platforms carries a Buy consensus rating, with an average price forecast of $767.42.
On July 30, UBS maintained a Buy rating and lowered its price forecast to $715. Baird maintained an Outperform rating and cut its price forecast to $750, while Goldman Sachs maintained a Buy rating and lowered its price forecast to $725.
Top ETF Exposure First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSE:FDN): 9.46% Weight Natixis Loomis Sayles Focused Growth ETF (NYSE:LSGR): 7.99% Weight Invesco Nasdaq Internet ETF (NASDAQ:PNQI): 7.66% Weight Significance: Because META carries such a heavy weight in these funds, any significant inflows or outflows for these ETFs will likely force automatic buying or selling of the stock.
Meta Price ActionMETA Stock Price Activity: Meta Platforms shares were up 0.73% at $550.00 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Meta ve 2. čtvrtletí zvýšila tržby o 28 % na zhruba 60,8 miliardy USD, ale volný peněžní tok jí meziročně spadl o 91 % na 784 milionů USD kvůli prudkému růstu investic do AI.
Meta Platforms' (META +0.43%) second-quarter numbers tell a strange story: The business itself is booming, but so much of its cash flow is being consumed by its AI build-out that there's little left over.
Free cash flow fell 91% year over year to just $784 million, even as revenue jumped and operating cash flow exceeded $31 billion. That combination should make long-term investors pause.
Meta reported Q2 revenue of about $60.8 billion, up 28%, with advertising sales rising 27% as AI tools improved ad targeting and content recommendations. Operating cash flow grew 25% to $31.86 billion, which is exactly what you want to see from a strong platform business.
The problem is on the other side of the ledger. Capital expenditures (capex) on servers, data centers, and network gear surged 83% to roughly $31.1 billion. Almost every dollar the business generated went straight back out the door again.
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Meta's early-year moves This was not a one-quarter blip. Earlier this year, Meta raised its full-year 2026 capex guidance to a range of $130 billion to $145 billion, up from an already huge $72.2 billion in 2025 and a prior forecast range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Analysts and infrastructure trackers now talk about Meta spending more in 2026 on AI data centers and compute than it did in 2024 and 2025 combined, with tens of gigawatts of new capacity planned to train and serve Llama models and other "Meta Superintelligence" projects.
Image source: Getty Images.
Heavy investment is not automatically bad. AI is already boosting Meta's ad business, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg points to more than 1 million businesses using AI agents on WhatsApp and Messenger each week.
The worry is timing and scale. Sell-side models now anticipate that Meta's free cash flow will turn negative in 2026 and drop by tens of billions of dollars more in 2027 as the company's capex continues to run ahead of its cash generation. That would be a dramatic swing for a company that produced $43.6 billion of free cash flow in 2025.
What about Meta investors? For shareholders, the risk is that Meta has locked itself into noncancelable infrastructure and component commitments of well over $200 billion without a clear, near-term line of sight into how much incremental profit those data centers and GPUs will generate.
If the AI products built on top of this spend do not lead to sustainably higher margins or new cash-rich businesses, Meta Platforms' shareholders could find themselves in a bad place. They would own a company that looks more like a capital-intensive utility than a high-margin software platform, with less flexibility to dial back its spending if conditions change.
That is why a 91% collapse in free cash flow in the middle of a period of strong revenue growth is more than a quirky headline. It is a reminder that the AI race is a balance-sheet race, and that not every participant will emerge with the same cash resilience it started with.
Activest Wealth Management ve 2. čtvrtletí snížila podíl v Meta Platforms o 29,5 % a prodala 7 373 akcií. Po prodeji držela 17 588 akcií v hodnotě 9,907 milionu USD.
Activest Wealth Management lowered its stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 29.5% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 17,588 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 7,373 shares during the quarter. Meta Platforms comprises approximately 1.9% of Activest Wealth Management’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 12th largest holding. Activest Wealth Management’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $9,907,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the stock. RHL Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter valued at $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at $29,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms in the 1st quarter valued at $36,000. Finally, Bayban raised its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 100.0% in the first quarter. Bayban now owns 70 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $40,000 after purchasing an additional 35 shares during the last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.
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 transaction of $754,800.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their position. The transaction 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, CFO Susan J. Li sold 2,127 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Saturday, August 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $689.85, for a total value of $1,467,310.95. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 15,347 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,587,127.95. The trade was a 12.17% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders have sold a total of 19,899 shares of company stock worth $12,290,969 in the last ninety days. 13.53% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.
Key Meta Platforms News Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week: Positive Sentiment: Meta’s AI investments are showing measurable benefits: second-quarter revenue increased 28% year over year to $60.8 billion, while AI-driven ad ranking reportedly lifted clicks and conversions. Advantage+ reached a $75 billion annual revenue run rate, supporting the argument that AI can improve monetization and eventually offset heavy infrastructure spending. Meta’s AI Payoff Has Already Begun Positive Sentiment: Some analysts and institutional investors remain constructive, viewing the recent selloff as excessive and citing future margin expansion, WhatsApp monetization and additional AI businesses as potential upside drivers. Meta also remains a major holding among several large investment firms. Meta’s Dip Offers A 30% Upside Potential Neutral Sentiment: Options traders are reportedly using range-bound strategies, indicating that markets may expect elevated volatility but no immediate decisive move while the legal proceedings unfold. Meta’s legal troubles has options traders eyeing the jade lizard Neutral Sentiment: CFO Susan Li sold 2,127 shares to cover tax withholding tied to vested equity awards. Because the transaction was described as tax-related rather than discretionary, it is unlikely to materially change the investment thesis. Susan Li Sells Meta Shares Negative Sentiment: The central market overhang is the landmark federal child-safety trial involving 29 states. Prosecutors allege Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to encourage addictive use among children, while former safety personnel have testified that Meta ignored or minimized internal warnings. A loss could lead to substantial penalties, product changes, restrictions on youth engagement and follow-on litigation, potentially threatening user activity and advertising revenue. Former Meta engineer resumes testimony Negative Sentiment: Privacy criticism surrounding Meta’s smart glasses, including workplace restrictions and reports of people being recorded without consent, creates reputational and adoption risks for the company’s wearables strategy. Meta Glasses privacy concerns Meta Platforms Stock Performance NASDAQ:META opened at $546.03 on Thursday. 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 fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $790.80. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.39 trillion, a PE ratio of 20.57, a P/E/G ratio of 0.93 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a fifty day moving average of $594.30 and a two-hundred day moving average of $617.08.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last issued 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). The firm 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 revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $7.14 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a $0.525 dividend. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is currently 7.91%.
Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth META has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $805.00 to $780.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Friday, May 1st. KeyCorp reduced their price objective on Meta Platforms from $790.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Bank of America decreased 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. TD Cowen dropped their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Rothschild & Co Redburn lifted their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $900.00 to $1,000.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 21st. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have issued a Hold rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.
Check Out Our Latest Analysis 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.
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Bývalý zaměstnanec Meta u soudu uvedl, že firma měla u bezpečnosti dětí politiku „neptej se, neříkej“ a upřednostňovala zisk před ochranou mladistvých. Žaloba států tvrdí, že Meta přispěla k duševní krizi teenagerů.
Mark Zuckerberg and his minions at Meta had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when child safety issues arose and preferred to turn a blind eye to protect profits, according to scorching testimony from a former employee on the second day of the historic trial Wednesday.
Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety researcher who has become one of its biggest critics, told jurors in California federal court that Zuckerberg did little to address the harmful effects of Facebook and Instagram despite having near-unchecked power as the company’s CEO.
“You just cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids,” Béjar said on the witness stand.
A courtroom sketch of Arturo Bejar during his testimony. REUTERS He was the first witness called by the coalition of 29 state attorneys general who have accused Meta of causing a teen mental health crisis through addictive app design that fueled anxiety, depression and even suicide – all while illegally harvesting kids’ data without parental consent.
The state AGs are seeking to force Meta to change key features of its apps and to impose major penalties on Meta over its alleged misdeeds. Lawyers for the states said the damages could approach $200 billion, while Meta has alleged the actual number could reach an astronomical $1.4 trillion.
Béjar, who led a safety-focused team at Meta from 2009 to 2015 and later returned as a consultant from 2019 to 2021, accused Zuckerberg of lying about the company’s commitment to protecting kids in public statements.
“I felt that he created a false and misleading impression of Facebook’s commitment to young people,” said Béjar, who estimated that he spoke to Zuckerberg about safety issues at least 100 times during his tenure.
Béjar was a safety researcher at Meta. REUTERS The researcher added that Meta had the capability to detect underage users who were evading safeguards but had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to protect its bottom line.
“Where the youngest kids are is where the users are going to be in the future,” Béjar said.
He previously served as a key witness in a separate trial brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, where he emotionally described how his then-16-year-old daughter received sick messages from pervs including “unsolicited penis pictures” shortly after she joined Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify during the trial. Getty Images Under cross examination by a Meta attorney in the current trial, Béjar admitted that he was caught off guard by the extent of the risks his daughter would face when he allowed her to join Instagram.
“I kept an eye on how distressing it was for her,” Béjar said. “She got a good following, at the price of harm.”
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The state AGs’ trial is expected to last roughly six weeks. Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are each expected to testify during the proceedings.
Meta has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and accused the state AGs of seeking penalties that go far beyond the scope of their case.
During opening statements on Tuesday, Meta’s lawyer Paul Schmidt argued that Zuckerberg and his allies have worked to improve Facebook and Instagram and taken many steps to protect kids online – including parental oversight tools and time limits for social media use.
BTC Capital Management Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 3.2% in the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 50,696 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 1,562 shares during the quarter. Meta Platforms accounts for about 1.7% of BTC Capital Management Inc.’s portfolio, making the stock its 10th largest holding. BTC Capital Management Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $28,553,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.
Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of META. First National Bank Sioux Falls lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. First National Bank Sioux Falls now owns 2,001 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,321,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares during the period. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. boosted 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 valued at $649,000 after purchasing an additional 14 shares during the last quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. grew its position in Meta Platforms by 1.3% during the 2nd 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 during the period. Arcataur Capital Management LLC grew its position in Meta Platforms by 0.9% during the 4th quarter. Arcataur Capital Management LLC now owns 1,736 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,146,000 after purchasing an additional 15 shares during the period. Finally, Acorn Creek Capital LLC raised its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the 4th 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 last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.
Analysts Set New Price Targets META has been the subject of several analyst reports. Wolfe Research reissued an “outperform” rating and issued a $700.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Citizens Jmp reduced their price target on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $770.00 and set a “market outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Cantor Fitzgerald decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $680.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $810.00 price objective on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Monday, June 1st. Finally, Robert W. Baird dropped their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have assigned a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $785.32.
Read Our Latest Report on META Trending Headlines about Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Some analysts view META’s decline as excessive, arguing that one-time legal and severance costs have weighed on earnings and that future margin expansion, AI-powered advertising, and WhatsApp monetization could support substantial upside. Meta also remains among the major technology holdings disclosed by Appaloosa Management. Meta’s Dip Offers A 30% Upside Potential Neutral Sentiment: A federal child-safety trial has begun in California, with 29 states alleging that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among younger users, concealed health risks, and violated child-privacy and consumer-protection laws. The states are seeking potentially enormous damages—reported at roughly $200 billion in some filings and as much as $1.4 trillion in broader claims—as well as changes to the platforms. The outcome could establish a precedent for similar lawsuits and regulatory action across the industry. Meta faces 29-state trial that could reshape Instagram and Facebook Negative Sentiment: The trial is the immediate catalyst for investor selling because a loss could lead to major financial penalties, costly product changes, and restrictions on how Meta engages younger users—potentially affecting user engagement and advertising revenue. The risk is amplified by Meta’s recent loss of a nearly $1 billion New Mexico judgment and the prospect of additional lawsuits. Meta Stock Sinks as $200B Trial Threatens Facebook and Instagram Ad Revenue Negative Sentiment: Investors are also scrutinizing Meta’s AI spending. Large data-center investments are consuming cash, while debt and off-balance-sheet financing arrangements could create future obligations if AI assets underperform. Meta’s recent quarterly EPS miss and margin pressure add to concerns that the AI buildout may take time to generate returns. What Could Meta’s Off-Balance-Sheet AI Financing Mean for Investors? Negative Sentiment: Privacy concerns are spreading beyond regulators: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has barred employees from wearing Meta’s smart glasses at work, adding to reputational and adoption risks for the device business. ICE Bars Its Workers From Wearing Meta’s Smart Glasses on the Job Insider Buying and Selling at Meta Platforms In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total transaction of $2,012,047.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 9,498 shares in the company, valued at $5,708,013.06. This represents a 26.06% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CFO Susan J. Li sold 2,127 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Saturday, August 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $689.85, for a total transaction of $1,467,310.95. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 15,347 shares in the company, valued at $10,587,127.95. This represents a 12.17% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders have sold a total of 19,899 shares of company stock valued at $12,290,969 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.
Meta Platforms Stock Down 4.4% Meta Platforms stock opened at $543.82 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $1.39 trillion, a PE ratio of 20.48, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 12 month low of $520.26 and a 12 month high of $790.80. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $594.80 and a 200-day simple moving average of $618.43. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 2.23 and a quick ratio of 2.23.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its 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 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 analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $7.14 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts anticipate that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.
About Meta Platforms (Free Report)
Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.
Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.
See Also Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms The AI Boom Is Turning This Cable Maker Into a Stock to Watch A Star Investor Just Trimmed Amazon—Here’s What It means Wendy’s Deal Buzz May Give Fast-Food Investors a New Reason to Look Home Depot Analysts See a Path to $375 and Beyond Want to see what other hedge funds are holding META? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report).
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Meta Glasses jsou terčem kritiky kvůli tajnému natáčení a obcházení kontrolní LED diody; Meta v červenci po tlaku přidala aktualizaci proti manipulaci s ní.
“I’ve had one person who told me that their intentions were creepy,” a man tells me over a video call, on condition of anonymity. He’s based in Los Angeles, and while we speak, he eats what appears to be tuna directly out of the can. “He said: ‘I go to strip clubs, and I want to record the strippers … Normally I put my phone in my chest pocket, but the glasses are more convenient.’”
The man I’m talking to runs a business called Ghost Metas. He’s one of hundreds of vendors, easily discoverable online, who specialise in disabling the flashing LED light embedded in Meta’s smartglasses that blinks when wearers capture photos, videos and audio. After Ghost Metas disables the LED, it’s impossible for someone to know they’re being filmed.
He flips his camera over to show me his work bench, revealing painter’s tape, a drill, a hole puncher, a dental pick and a tube of resin. He says he’s worked on about 100 pairs of glasses, and that one pair only takes him about 15 to 20 minutes.
“In public, I don’t think we have privacy any more, period,” he says, when I ask whether what he’s doing feels wrong. “My argument is if you’re really worried about your privacy, don’t go outside.”
The success of Ghost Metas is parallel to the runaway success of Meta Glasses, designed in partnership with established glasses brands Ray-Ban and Oakley. Meta said that it sold roughly 7 million pairs in 2025 alone, practically tripling combined sales numbers from 2023 and 2024. Influencers, athletes and global celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth and Teyana Taylor have embraced the tech in sponsored posts and buzzy ads. The glasses mark a turnaround for a company that made big missteps by overinvesting in virtual reality “metaverses” and trailing behind in the AI race.
The most notable endorser has been Kylie Jenner who, in June, collaborated with Meta on her own line of AI glasses. “Hey Meta – take a picture,” Jenner commands her $399 Starfire glasses in an advertisement for the collab. Meta promises that users can ask Kylie’s glasses any question, and the AI will issue “every response in Kylie’s voice”.
The reality of how people are using the glasses has been less benign. They have been widely used for exploitation and privacy violations, much of which has been bragged about on social media by bad actors themselves. Online creators – primarily men – have used the glasses to troll boardwalks, college campuses, and streets outside bars in search of women to hit on, and then post the interactions. Some men have recorded overtly racist videos in which they enter massage parlors staffed by Asian women and ask for “happy ending” massages. Others have used the glasses to record bathing suit-clad women at the beach.
I’ve spoken with people who say Meta Glasses have been used to secretly record their private interactions, with one source describing an incident inside her house that she felt endangered her children.
Many of these videos are captured and posted online without the consent of their subjects, often by influencers who want to humiliate the subjects they’ve filmed.
To protect against this, on every pair of glasses there’s an LED light that’s supposed to let people know the glasses are recording. Meta makes assurances that the glasses won’t record when the LED light is blocked or obscured. But the man behind Ghost Metas says it’s easy to modify the glasses to block the light without triggering the refusal failsafe.
He acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of his clients have been men but he doesn’t agree that the glasses are only being used for spying. Many of his customers are parents, who he says tell him: “‘I want to record my kid, but every time the light’s on, the kid just keeps looking at the light.’” He also said he’s done several pairs for food delivery drivers and others with similar jobs, who have told him that they want to protect themselves from false claims of undelivered orders or unwanted harassment.
What Ghost Metas is doing clearly breaks the terms of service of Meta Glasses. But could Meta argue it’s an inversion of their appeal? Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who has positioned the glasses as a smartphone killer, said in September 2025 that “the promise of glasses is to preserve this sense of presence that you have with other people”. Smartglasses bring the functionality of smartphones, cameras included, into every moment. Several people I spoke to say that even when the LED is functioning as intended it can be subtle and difficult to spot from far away, especially if you aren’t aware of how smartglasses work. Others shared that they sought out the glasses to capture more “natural” footage of those around them, explicitly because people act differently when they know they’re being recorded. As Meta themselves put in their advertising materials: “Record life as you live it – every detail, every angle.”
Mark Zuckerberg records video using the Orion augmented reality (AR) glasses, triggering a small light on the frames, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, in September 2024. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesOther tech giants have tried – and failed – to successfully market smartglasses. In 2013, Google released Google Glass, but discontinued them in 2015 amid backlash that resulted in a journalist getting assaulted in the street for wearing a pair. Snapchat tried for years to push Spectacles, first released in 2016, to no avail. (It’s now slated to release augmented-reality glasses called Specs later this year, though between their awkwardly bulbous appearance and $2,195 price tag, they may be dead on arrival). Apple’s Vision Pro, meanwhile, has seen disappointing sales since its release in early 2024. Beyond headwear, there have been products like an always-listening version of Amazon’s Halo Band bracelet, which the Washington Post once called “the most invasive tech we’ve ever tested”. Amazon scrapped the always-on microphone in 2021, again in response to people finding the update wildly creepy, and the Halo line was discontinued entirely by 2023.
So why did Meta Glasses succeed when so many of their competitors were deemed creepy and ugly? One big answer seems to be fashion.
Unlike their predecessors, Meta Glasses have familiar designer names behind them. EssilorLuxottica, the Italian corporation that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley, is an eyewear titan that raked in about $33.8bn in 2025, with about 12% of its overall sales to Ray-Ban.
“Ray-Ban is fashionable in a perennial sort of way, not a fleeting sort of way,” said Amy Odell, fashion journalist and author of the Back Row newsletter. Zuckerberg, she added, “is right that in order to get these things to sell, they do have to be great glasses first. And you really can’t go wrong by going to the most iconic sunglasses brand.”
Meta also makes a number of privacy assurances about the glasses, promising users they are “designed for privacy” and that Meta doesn’t have access to recordings made by using the glasses. However, a joint investigation by the Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten revealed that Meta was, in fact, storing recordings made by glasses wearers. The papers interviewed Kenyan whistleblowers working for the controversial content moderation sweatshop Sama, which is subcontracted by Meta to sort through and annotate content that may be fed into Meta’s AI models.
“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor told the Swedish newspapers. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.” Other Sama employees shared stories of reviewing content collected while glasses wearers were having sex, looking at their or their partner’s naked body, or viewing sensitive documents that revealed personal identifying information. The reporting quickly prompted a class action lawsuit in San Francisco federal court, which alleges that Meta engaged in false advertising in relation to its privacy assurances.
In a statement, Meta said that “unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience … we take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy.”
The lawyers bringing the class action disagree. “These products aren’t designed for user control and privacy,” said Ryan Clarkson, whose firm filed the suit. “In my opinion, they’re designed to maximise profits, and to turn every person who buys one into a Trojan horse of surveillance.”
‘I felt extremely violated’Nonconsensual recordings can happen to anyone, anywhere. People have been secretly recorded in their workplace; one lawyer told the Guardian that he was covertly filmed by potential clients during a free consultation. Some Meta Glasses wearers have recorded videos of trips to hospitals and children’s dentist offices and shared them online.
You could even be covertly recorded in your own home – as was the case for Brek Mettra, a mother of two in Utah who was secretly filmed in her house during a transaction with a local vintage clothing seller. After the pair connected on Facebook Marketplace (also run by Meta), the seller met Mettra at her home to buy a T-shirt. Unbeknownst to her, he had used Meta Glasses to record their exchange, which he then uploaded to social media as content to promote his business.
Mettra said it wasn’t until a “random guy” in Philadelphia contacted her to inquire about a T-shirt he had seen in the clip that she knew the video even existed.
In the video, a copy of which was reviewed by the Guardian, Mettra’s face is visible, as are the faces of her two very young children. Though Mettra wasn’t tagged, the video revealed her identifying information: the vintage seller had paid Mettra using Venmo, and her full name was visible on her Venmo profile, which was how the stranger in Philly found her. “I honestly felt extremely violated,” said Mettra, who added that she does not remember seeing an LED light on the glasses.
After making multiple requests for him to take the video down, the seller deleted the post once Mettra warned him that she had contacted Instagram. “Please, for my children and myself I really hope you delete it,” Mettra pleaded in one message to the seller, which was reviewed by the Guardian. The seller didn’t respond to a request for comment but he has posted several similar recordings across multiple Instagram and TikTok accounts, with a tag included in his Instagram captions noting that the videos have been recorded with “Ray-Ban Meta glasses”.
Others say they’ve been harassed by Meta Glasses wearers in spaces they had previously felt safe in. Karina and Kyle, a young couple who asked to be identified by their first names to protect their privacy, are avid ravers who, earlier this year, had a disturbing encounter with a man who was using Meta Glasses to record young women’s bodies at a large EDM festival in Las Vegas.
The couple initially bumped into the man on the dancefloor, where they caught him leering at Karina’s breasts through a pair of Ray-Bans. They were close enough to notice that an LED on the glasses was flashing, signaling that the man was filming. Asked to stop recording, the man stormed away. A little while later, though, they saw the man again. This time, he was sitting on the ground beneath two bikini-clad young women, who were perched on tall barstools as they watched the show. Glasses on, the man stared at their bodies from below. It wasn’t until he took out his phone and attempted to take additional recordings, the couple said, that people around him realised he was recording and notified the women.
Karina is still unsettled by the knowledge that nonconsensual recordings of her may be out there. “It’s really disgusting … there are so many possibilities of what people could do,” she said.
Meta refuted to the Guardian that the main purpose of the glasses is to make unnoticeable recordings. But each victim of nonconsensual recordings called attention to the innocuity of the glasses, and how much more difficult – if not impossible – the glasses were to spot compared with handheld cameras or smartphones. And Mettra, for her part, said she doesn’t remember seeing a recording light. “If he would’ve pulled out a camera, I could have said no, or leave if you’re going to do that,” said Mettra. “It opened my eyes to be a little bit less trusting in people.”
“I feel like that’s the whole point of these glasses,” added Karina, “that they’re inconspicuous.”
‘A red line society must not cross’Being secretly recorded is currently the primary fear associated with Meta Glasses. But covert recordings may just be the first step in a more sophisticated surveillance apparatus integrated with another deeply controversial technology: facial recognition.
In February, the New York Times reported on an internal Meta Reality Labs document in which the company discussed its plans to integrate a facial recognition feature called “NameTag” into its smartglasses.
In the document, dated to May 2025, Meta said that it planned to launch NameTag “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns”.
In response to the Times’ reporting, Meta said that NameTag was something it was “still thinking through” and promised to “take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out”.
A few months later, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued an open letter to Meta signed by 75 different organizations condemning the integration of a feature like NameTag into smartglasses as “a red line society must not cross”.
By then, though, NameTag was already further along than was publicly known. A June Wired investigation revealed that latent code for NameTag was secretly rolled to Meta smartglasses as early as January 2026. While technically unreleased and inaccessible to consumers, the code contained the architecture for a system that would save faces viewed through Meta smartglasses as biometric “faceprints” and store them on users’ devices.
“You don’t put code like this in your app unless you’re planning to release that feature very soon,” said Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Threat Lab, who independently reviewed the NameTag code discovered by Wired.
A few days after it was discovered, Meta quietly deleted the inactive code.
The privacy light embedded within Meta’s smartglasses. Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersTechnically, building facial recognition into smartglasses isn’t difficult. In late 2024, two Harvard dropouts were able to embed the facial recognition library PimEyes into a pair of Meta Ray-Bans; coupled with help from a large language model, the glasses were successfully able to connect strangers’ faces to their name, job, social media, address, contact information, information about family members and other personal data. (Meta told the Guardian that “these students simply used publicly available facial recognition software, PimEyes, on a computer that would work with photos taken on any camera, phone or recording device … Meta’s AI glasses do not have facial recognition technology.”)
But just last week, 404 Media reported that Meta filed a patent for a facial recognition feature for its AI glasses that would identify people in the frame and use that information to create highlight reels of that person or people. The example given in Meta’s patent was identifying and creating videos of guests at a dinner party.
According to Kade Crockford, the director for technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, the uncovered NameTag code signals a step toward a radical transformation of our existing privacy landscape – and they’ve “been dreading this moment for 20 years”.
Meta is keen to emphasise that their glasses are uniquely beneficial for blind and low-vision people, many of whom say the tech has been transformational for their daily independence and safety. While discussing NameTag in a recent podcast interview, Meta’s CTO, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, emphasised that putting facial recognition into smartglasses could offer additional support to people living with vision or memory disabilities.
But the reasons to not introduce unchecked facial recognition into smartglasses are vast, privacy advocates have warned. Citizens attending protests could wind up with their names and faces being sucked into a database. To that end, ICE officers have already been caught using Meta Glasses to surveil demonstrators, and earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security requested millions in order to build facial recognition into smartglasses. A woman could brush off an advance by a stranger in a bar, or on a bus, or at a workplace, only for that stranger to already know her name, which they may use to find her address and other information. Other vulnerable demographics – LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color – may also be stalked, harassed and targeted by abusers receiving assistance from facial recognition.
Asked about Meta’s facial recognition plans, a spokesperson for Meta said that “we’re exploring these types of features as people regularly express interest in seeing them. Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything. If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about – we are not building a central face database.”
A brewing backlashAs Meta promotes the glasses with paid influencer content and high-profile partnerships, resistance against the tech is intensifying. Activists recently plastered London bus stops with anti-glasses guerilla ads, one of which depicted the infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in the Ray-Bans with the tagline “glasses for people who don’t do consent”. Some glasses owners say they’ve started leaving the spectacles at home because they don’t want to be associated with creeps. A professor in Germany built an app called Nearby Glasses, a free, open-source service that detects when smartglasses are close by and issues an alert. And during a July performance at a music festival in Madrid sponsored by Ray-Ban, the singer Lorde told the crowd that “you don’t know if someone’s wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those fucked-up fucking … can I just say, for the record, fuck the glasses! Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”
In early July, Meta announced that it would push an update to detect when an LED light has been “physically tampered with or destroyed” and stop people filming using those glasses. Two months after we spoke, Ghost Metas decided to pause his business as a result of the update. “Too much risk,” said the now former LED disabler. One client, he added, had gotten in touch to say that his glasses were no longer working.
“People use our glasses because they’re genuinely helpful … for those wearing them and the people around them. Trust matters,” a spokesperson for Meta told the Guardian when asked about disabling the LED. “That’s why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up. Every pair has a capture LED that blinks when you take a photo or video that you can save or share, it can’t be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled.”
But many other LED disablers told the Guardian they’re still working, even after Meta’s update.
“The new update hasn’t been impacting the glasses at all,” said one disabler in early August, after Facebook had announced the update. Since the update, he said he’s tampered with the lights on the Gen 2 and Kylie Jenner models, and that “they work fine.”
“I’ve done hundreds and [only] one person is having problems out of hundreds, so I chalk that up to him being a dumbass,” said another. “Mine are working perfect still.”
A billboard advertising Kylie Jenner’s Meta Glasses collaboration in Los Angeles, California, on 27 June 2026. Photograph: Barry King/AlamyOthers are still able to get by with lower-risk alternatives to physically drilling out the LED – including an Engadget journalist, who found they were able to successfully block out the recording light with a $2 sticker.
Things have gotten so bad that Instagram, which is also owned by Meta, is publicly warning that the glasses are being used to harass people and warns about posting content from Meta Glasses. “If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, said in a video announcing a crackdown on harassing content. “We’re trying to fight that every way we can.”
As part of this purported crackdown, Instagram deactivated the accounts of several pickup artists with large followings. As of publishing this story, however, dozens of pickup artist videos filmed with Meta Glasses are still easily discoverable on Instagram, clearly marked by captions such as “POV MILF RIZZ”, “POV LATINA RUNDOWN” and “POV COLLEGE RIZZ”. After we notified Meta to multiple active accounts dedicated to pickup artist content, the accounts were deactivated.
Though taking pictures and videos in public spaces is generally legal in the US, existing laws regarding two-party consent and wiretapping, particularly on the state level, may have rendered some nonconsensual recordings captured by Meta Glasses illegal. (Of course, victims would generally have to know that recordings exist in order to take action against them.) Even so, the passage of meaningful federal privacy regulation in the US that would take policy out of the hands of corporations, replacing patchworked state laws and setting standards that would shift the regulatory burden to companies instead of individuals.
“The argument for federal privacy legislation is stronger every day, and Congress’s seeming commitment to do nothing is also stronger,” said Quintin. “I think privacy is a human right, and we should expect it. We used to expect it, and I don’t know why we as a society have largely just given up on that. I think we should demand it, and demand that Congress take action and regulate privacy.”
But Meta has proven a market, and other tech companies are chasing. Google has a partnership with Samsung and the designer eyewear company Gentle Monster, and is also working on a collaboration with the affordable glasses-maker Warby Parker. And Apple is not only working on its own glasses, but is also rumoured to be infusing cameras into its popular AirPods designed to feed an AI system information about the wearer’s surroundings, according to Bloomberg. Across Silicon Valley, AI hardware startups – including many designing AI wearables beyond glasses – abound.
Meta itself is mining deeper into higher echelons of luxury fashion. In 2025 it released a limited-edition pair of smart Ray-Bans with the French clothing brand Coperni, and it’s due to release a pair of smartglasses designed in collaboration with Prada. (In February, Zuckerberg even sat front row at a Prada fashion show.) The fashion industry seems excited to make this new era of surveillance as chic as possible.
“We’re frogs in a boiling pot, and the temperature is getting hotter and hotter,” said Clarkson, the lawyer. “So here we have a leap in the erosion of our privacy rights through this slick technology that big tech promises will enrich our lives, make us more connected, smarter, more efficient – when instead it’s going to move us, by an order of magnitude, toward a far more surveilled state of existence.”
In the modern world, anonymity is a precious resource. If smartphones have made constant filming more acceptable, smartglasses are among a class of technologies that make it quieter – omnipresent, but less and less visible.
A pair of glasses suddenly come with endless question marks, and a humming fear that our presence in public spaces involves a Foucauldian forfeiture of privacy. When you feel like anyone could be filming you, you act like you’re always being filmed.
Akcie Meta v úterý ráno klesly asi o 3,8 % na 547,62 USD, protože investoři zpochybňují návratnost masivních výdajů na AI. Tržby ve 2. čtvrtletí vzrostly o 28 % na 60,8 miliardy USD, ale náklady vyskočily o 55 % na 42 miliard USD.
, the social-media powerhouse behind Facebook, Instagram and one of the biggest artificial-intelligence bets in technology, dropped approximately 3.8% to $547.62 Tuesday morning as investors punished expensive technology stocks and questioned whether Meta's massive AI spending can translate into stronger profits. The decline made Meta the weakest performer among the Magnificent Seven during early trading.
The story is no longer about whether Meta can grow. It can. The real question is whether the company can turn explosive spending into explosive returns. Second-quarter results showed revenue climbing 28% to $60.8 billion, proving the advertising engine remains a monster. But expenses jumped 55% to $42 billion as Meta aggressively expanded AI infrastructure, data centers and research. Operating income fell 8%, earnings declined 13%, and free cash flow dropped to just $784 million after capital expenditures reached $31.08 billion.
Meta's advertising business is still firing. Ad impressions rose 14%, while the average price per ad increased 12%, showing advertisers continue to value access to billions of users across Meta's platforms. The problem is that AI is becoming an expensive race, and Meta is spending at a scale few companies can match. Investors now want proof that these billions of dollars in AI investments will create a new profit engine rather than simply become a permanent drag on margins.
The valuation debate is where the bulls and bears separate. The GF Value chart shows Meta trading at $548.50 compared with a GF Value estimate of $838.91, meaning the stock sits approximately 34.62% below its estimated intrinsic value. For long-term investors, the market may be offering a rare discount on one of the world's strongest digital platforms. But Meta still has something to prove: that its AI ambitions can deliver returns as impressive as the spending behind them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prohibited its employees from wearing Meta’s smart glasses, the latest workplace to ban the devices out of privacy concerns.
In a memo about the policy on Tuesday, ICE said it considered the glasses, which can discreetly record video and audio, as a body-worn camera. As a result, “the use of Meta Glasses or similar devices could unintentionally capture, record, or transmit sensitive information, potentially compromising privacy and legal protections,” David Venturella, the agency’s acting director, wrote in the memo.
Under the policy, ICE said employees would be barred from wearing the Meta glasses in the “federal workspace.” The policy applied to all employees, not just its law enforcement officials, the agency said.
“Personally owned body-worn cameras and unauthorized recording are prohibited, as they always have been,” a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Meta declined to comment.
ICE joins a growing number of organizations and workplaces to ban Meta’s smart glasses, which have become one of the company’s best-selling hardware products, even as they have raised privacy and surveillance concerns. Meta debuted the smart glasses in 2021, and has released versions in partnership with companies like Ray-Ban and Oakley.
The glasses feature a small camera above the eye frame that can record video and audio, and they emit a blinking white light while recording. New versions have an artificial intelligence assistant that can respond to voice commands and a project a tiny screen visible to the wearer in the corner of the eye frame.
Last month, New York became the first state to ban Meta’s smart glasses in its court buildings to “ensure that no one can be recorded surreptitiously.” Some retail stores and restaurants have also forbidden the devices, which have spawned an industry of content creators who film inside businesses, often without permission.
ICE does not have a partnership with Meta, but its agents have come under fire in the last year for wearing the company’s smart glasses to protests and during immigration raids. ICE initially told employees the glasses were banned in June, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times.
In the Department of Homeland Security’s budget proposal in April, the agency requested $7.5 million to develop its own smart glasses prototype to help with immigration enforcement, including glasses that can “enable biometric identification of illegal aliens.”
The Times previously reported that Meta was working on adding facial recognition features to its smart glasses; the company has not made those features available. Privacy groups have raised concerns about facial recognition. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter signed by 77 organizations asking that Meta not include facial recognition in its glasses out of privacy and civil liberty concerns.
“Facial recognition technology built into inconspicuous consumer eyewear represents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society,” the organization wrote. “Our concerns reflect the fundamental danger of the technology itself.”
The glasses have become a focal point of Meta’s A.I. ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has called smart glasses “the ideal form of superintelligence,” a powerful A.I. that the company is investing hundreds of billions to develop.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has heavily marketed new versions of its smart glasses, including with celebrities like Kylie Jenner and athletes who played in the World Cup.
Meta podle zprávy platí influencery, aby propagovali teen účty a bezpečnostní nástroje Instagramu, hlavně tam, kde vlády zpřísňují pravidla pro sociální sítě.
In July 2025, Meta gathered parenting influencers from all over Australia at a waterfront venue overlooking the Sydney Opera House. It was a camping-themed event and in many ways was like any other influencer affair. There were Instagram-branded tents to take pictures in, an Instagram-branded step-and-repeat, a custom-tote making station and Instagram-branded snacks and coffee cups.
But this “screen smart” event wasn’t about the photo op.
Meta was playing defense: the company had five months until the Australian government planned to enforce a new law that banned children under 16 from using social media platforms. The Silicon Valley-based firm told influencers that blanket bans on teens’ use of social media weren’t effective and recruited them to send a message to their hundreds of thousands of followers: Meta already had tools to help parents keep teens safe on Instagram.
Since 2024, Meta has tapped an army of influencers to promote its safety tools for teens. A new report by the Tech Transparency Project, a digital advocacy group, shows that whenever a government began discussing social media regulations for teens, Meta started recruiting lifestyle, parenting and mental health creators to promote parental and other safety controls the company already offers, including its accounts for users between the ages of 13 and 17, which have more restrictions than regular accounts. Meta recruited influencers through events, like the one in Australia, and paid some of them for their advocacy by sponsoring posts, according to the report.
Meta also found support from parent, advocacy and research groups that it supports financially in pushing back against teen bans or restrictions, according to the report.
Meta’s reliance on influencers to fight the bans suggests the company recognizes it can’t fight these measures, which would could cost it millions of users, alone, said Katie Paul, the director of the Tech Transparency Project. Meta needs to use influencers to spread its message because people don’t trust the company, said Paul. “The brand has become a problem,” Paul said.
Responding to questions about the report, Meta said that the firm works hard to “build strong protections for teens and effective controls for parents”.
“Blanket bans don’t keep young people safe, they simply push them toward less safe, unregulated corners of the internet,” said Edward Patterson, a spokesperson. “Where our apps remain available, such as in Australia where 16- and 17-year-olds are defaulted into Teen Accounts, we will continue working with parents and experts to ensure families are aware of our safety features, and know how to make the most of them.”
In November 2024, Australia became the first country in the world to ban teens under 16 from using social media apps. The law, which went into effect in December 2025, required social media companies to shut down existing teen accounts and reject new ones. (Meta already had rules in place that barred kids younger than 13 from opening an account.)
Concern over teen use of social media has been growing since at least 2021, when whistleblowers including Frances Haugen and Arturo Bejar shared internal Meta documents showing the company knew teens were being exposed to harmful content but didn’t work to mitigate those harms. In the US, several states sued Meta, accusing the company of deliberately making its platform addictive to younger users.
Meta has since introduced teen accounts with built-in restrictions, including limits on who can message teen users and more sensitive content filters that limit their exposure to violent or harmful videos. But concerns have remained.
Australia passed its law after a 2025 study it commissioned found that 96% of children between the ages of 10 and 15 used social media and that 71% of those children were exposed to harmful content, including fight videos, posts that encourage unhealthy eating or exercise habits and sexist or otherwise hateful posts.
Concern over teen use of social media has been growing since at least 2021. Photograph: Anna Barclay/Getty ImagesMeta has taken down 756,000 accounts it suspected belonged to teens since the ban. Meanwhile, the move to restrict or altogether ban teens from using social media has gained momentum around the world.
Indonesia became the first south-east Asian country to roll out a blanket teen social media ban in March 2026. Some states in India have issued blanket bans, while the country continues to consider regulating social media use for children. Brazil introduced the Digital Statute of Children and Adolescents in March 2026 which, among other regulations, requires strict age verification systems and children’s accounts to be linked to their parents’.
These countries represent some of the biggest markets for social media companies and Meta in particular. In all of them, Meta launched some version of its influencer campaign.
In Australia, several of the creators who attended the “Instagram Safety Camp” had paid partnerships with the company and shared posts lauding Meta for the work it was doing to keep teens safe. Tammin Sursok, an actor known for her role in Pretty Little Liars who posts about parenting, said the event was “an amazing way to hear what Instagram is doing to keep our teens safe with #instagramteenaccounts”. She cited some teen account features including parental supervision, protections from explicit images and restrictions to livestreaming and ended her post with #instagrampartner implying a paid partnership with the company.
Meta said it does not disclose the terms of individual partnerships.
One of the panels featured a representative from ReachOut Australia, an online youth mental health resource, who later shared insights from the safety camp online. ReachOut Australia lists Meta as one of its “gold” sponsors. As part of their partnership with ReachOut, Meta helped finance an online teen safety series that touted Instagram teen accounts in several episodes.
Meta said it had been working with ReachOut for the better part of a decade to create campaigns that inform users of the safety tools available to them, but that the organization had its own independent editorial voice and mission. “No partner, including Meta, reviews or approves what we publish or what our people say publicly,” a spokesperson for ReachOut Australia said.
In Indonesia, months after the government announced it was considering age restrictions for social media platforms, Meta hosted a series of events including its Instagram safety camp. Darius Sinathrya, a well-known Indonesian actor with 1.8 million followers, shared footage of one of the panels and encouraged his followers to try Meta’s safety features. “Come on, parents try this feature to make your children safer and smarter in the digital world,” he wrote in his caption.
In February 2026, Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s electronics information technology minister, said the government was discussing age-based social media restrictions. Over the next few months, mom influencers all over India began sharing paid posts about Instagram’s teen accounts. One account with 250,000 followers, Imperfect Mom Who Travels, posted a video that showed her son starting an Instagram teen account. “Glad to see @Instagram Teen Accounts come with built-in protections designed for age-appropriate experiences from day one. #ad,” the caption reads.
That same week, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based thinktank Observer Research Foundation argued in a column that teen social media bans are ineffective. The Observer Research Foundation received funding from Facebook India in 2022 and lists Meta as well as several other big tech firms among its partners.
Meta said it did not pay the author or organization to write the opinion piece. Observer Research Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
Bejar, the Facebook whistleblower who worked on online safety at the company, said influencers promoting teen accounts were creating a false promise of safety and security the accounts just don’t provide.
“You can still search for suicide and self-harm content even though they promise you can’t,” Bejar said. “You can search for eating disorder content and it’s their own search recommendations that circumvent their own safety features.”
It was yet more evidence that Meta cares more about its brand than safety, Bejar said. “It’s wrong that they’re leveraging their own platform to both advertise and then also leverage creators who benefit from the platform. There’s conflicts of interest across the board to create a false and dangerous impression of security and safety for young people.”
Meta said Bejar’s experience with Instagram’s safety features predated teen accounts.
Governments around the world are scrambling to mitigate the harms of social media on teen users, and many are reaching for blanket bans or other age-based restrictions to do so. Experts are still debating whether those restrictions are effective, enforceable or the best mechanism to protect children.
In Australia, the country’s internet regulator found that more than 80% of teens were still using social media three months after the ban. Many teens also reported they weren’t asked their ages when using those platforms despite the government intending to double the penalty for tech firms that don’t comply with the law. The study highlights how difficult it is to police and enforce restrictions on digital platforms.
“We never expected that this would have 100% compliance,” said Andrew Leigh, assistant minister for productivity, competition, charities and treasury, at a conference defending the ban. “We don’t get 100% compliance out of minimum drinking age laws, but it’s still appropriate that we have that law on the books.”
In the US and the UK, digital advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future, which have historically opposed many of Meta’s data-privacy practices, have argued that bans and other age-based restrictions deny young people their rights to access information and speak online, said David Greene, senior counsel at EFF.
Greene argues government intervention should be a last resort and that non-governmental alternatives – such as parental control tools provided by the companies – are better options than a government stepping in.
Paul of the Tech Transparency Project, argued Meta had had many opportunities to prove it can create a platform that’s safe for children and teens.
“Facebook and its sister platforms have been around for 20 years at this point and the company has proven that it cannot be trusted to self-regulate – so what we’re seeing is governments taking that last resort and saying: ‘OK if kids can’t be protected on these platforms we’re going to have to do it ourselves,’” said Paul.
Soud v žalobě proti společnosti Meta kvůli škodám na mladistvých na Instagramu a Facebooku povolil společné projednání části nároků 29 států. Výsledek může ovlivnit další žaloby a vést k miliardovým pokutám.
As opening statements get underway in a landmark trial over claims that Meta Platforms (META.O) misled the public about the safety of Instagram and Facebook for young users and violated child privacy laws, one of the biggest fights in the case has already been resolved: whether a bipartisan group of U.S. states could present their claims together.
The states pushed for a single trial covering state consumer protection and federal privacy claims brought by 29 attorneys general, while Meta argued for a series of smaller trials grouping states that have similar laws.
The fight was about more than courtroom logistics. The states argued that the case centers on company-wide decisions affecting young users across the country and seeks nationwide changes to Meta's platforms, and that jurors should hear a single story about Meta's actions. Meta countered that jurors should evaluate states' claims separately because the underlying laws differ and warned that a combined proceeding could blur important distinctions among the claims.
Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers adopted a hybrid approach for the multi-week trial, allowing Colorado, California, Kentucky and New Jersey to try their state law claims together, while also including the federal law claims brought by all of the states. Although Rogers will decide the case, she appointed an advisory jury whose findings may inform her final ruling.
The trial's outcome could help guide how the remaining states' claims are resolved, reshape how Facebook and Instagram operate, and force Meta to pay billions of dollars in penalties.
Meta has called the allegations unsubstantiated and said it stands by its work to protect teen users of its platforms.
'A PROJECTION OF UNITY'
Legal experts said in a case against a company as well-capitalized as Meta, a multistate coalition gives the states the ability to pool resources and share expertise, and it may improve their credibility with the jury and the judge. They said attorneys general have used the strategy repeatedly in cases against the tobacco and opioid industries to strengthen their bargaining power and to present evidence of conduct that allegedly affected consumers across the country.
“A jury will see all these states banding together to do this, and that presents kind of like a projection of unity,” said Prentiss Cox, a former assistant state attorney general in Minnesota who is now a law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. “Elected officials on different sides of a partisan world can agree that this is a problem that needs solving.”
The states' lawsuit, which was filed in 2023, stems from a multistate investigation into Instagram and Facebook's impact on young users. The states generally allege that Meta knowingly designed features in Instagram and Facebook to hook young users while assuring the public that the platforms were safe, conduct they argue violated state consumer protection laws.
A large portion of the states are also suing under a federal law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, claiming Meta failed to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from young users.
In pushing for smaller trials, Meta argued that a combined proceeding would require jurors to understand the different legal standards for each state claim, making it harder to fairly evaluate each one. The company also said it planned to defend against the claims with state-specific evidence, an approach it argued would be more difficult in a larger consolidated trial.
“The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement ahead of trial. "Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout."
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman called the case the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history.
“AGs are in the perfect position to get this done," Coleman said in a statement. "We did it with the Tobacco Settlement in the 1990s. We did it with the companies behind the opioid crisis. We’ll do it again with Meta.”
Meta čelí novému riziku u svého datového centra v El Pasu za 14 miliard USD s BlackRock: projekt je podle Financial Times pojištěn jen částečně. Při velké škodě by tak mohl nést miliardové ztráty.
Meta Platforms Inc. (META, Financials), the social media and artificial intelligence company, faces a new risk around its $14 billion Texas data-center project with BlackRock.
The joint venture is developing a 1-gigawatt campus in El Paso, with BlackRock holding an 80% stake and Meta retaining 20%.
According to the Financial Times, only part of the project is fully insured, potentially leaving the venture exposed to billions of dollars in losses if the campus suffers a major event.
The project reportedly carries up to $427 million in all-risk property coverage during construction, rising to $450 million once operational. It also has $645 million of terrorism coverage and up to $218 million for rent losses caused by construction delays.
Those figures remain small relative to the roughly $14 billion development cost. For Meta investors, the issue adds another layer of risk to an already aggressive AI infrastructure buildout.
Joint ventures can reduce Meta's upfront capital burden, but they do not eliminate its economic exposure if major projects run into construction, financing or asset-value problems.
The key question is whether Meta's AI data centers generate enough long-term returns to justify both the spending and the risks attached to financing them.
Meta jde k soudu kvůli obvinění, že Facebook a Instagram navrhla jako návykové a zatajovala rizika pro děti. Proces má začít s úvodními řečmi v úterý v Oaklandu a může trvat čtyři až šest týdnů.
Social media giant Meta is heading to court in a case brought by a group of state attorneys general who claim the company designed its social media platforms to be addictive and misled the public about potential risks.
The trial is expected to begin with opening statements on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland after the two sides went through the jury selection process last week and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers turned down Meta's request for the case to be dismissed. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected to testify.
Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey first filed the lawsuit in 2023 after a multistate investigation into the impact of Facebook and Instagram on young users. They argue that the platforms were designed to be addictive and that the company downplayed the potential impact on young people, while also alleging Meta violated federal law when it collected personal information from children.
Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey first filed the lawsuit in 2023 after a multistate investigation into the impact of Facebook and Instagram on young users. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has denied wrongdoing and disputes claims that its social media platforms caused the harm alleged by states. It also argues that "social media addiction" isn't an officially recognized psychiatric diagnosis, which will be a significant point of contention at trial.
FOUR STATES SEEKING $1.4 TRILLION IN PENALTIES IN CHILD SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION TRIAL, META SAYS
California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement last week after the court allowed the case to proceed, saying, "Meta designed a dangerous product for young users, knew it to be dangerous, and then lied to children, families, and the community about how dangerous it was."
A Meta spokesperson pushed back on the states' case against the company and said in a statement to FOX Business that the "limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate."
"The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout," the company spokesperson said, adding that the company stands by its "record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court."
Ticker Security Last Change Change % META META PLATFORMS INC. 589.85 -5.12 -0.86% Meta has argued that the damages sought by the state attorneys general could reach as high as $1.4 trillion, which is nearly the size of the company's market capitalization – though the AGs haven't disclosed the amount they plan to seek at trial and will likely do so once the trial begins.
NEW MEXICO COURT ORDERS META TO PAY $567M, OVERHAUL TEEN PROTECTIONS
Monte Mann, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale, told FOX Business in an interview that this will be a "bellwether case" for the theory that social media platforms were designed to be addictive and have harmful effects on young users.
Mann said that as someone who has tried cases like this one, he will be paying close attention to what internal Meta documents indicate about the company's knowledge of the allegedly compulsive nature of its products and their mental health impact, saying those documents "may be the star witness in the case."
"I will be very interested to see what the internal Meta, Facebook, Instagram documents say about what they knew of the compulsive nature of these products and services; when they knew it; whether they tried to enhance their design elements to take advantage of those things, what they disclosed to the public," he said.
Meta has argued that the damages sought by the state attorneys general could reach as high as $1.4 trillion. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Mann also noted that Judge Gonzalez Rogers appointed an advisory jury in the case, which can provide feedback and recommendations on community standards for children's use of social media that she may consider.
META, OTHER COMPANIES MUST FACE THOUSANDS OF LAWSUITS OVER CHILD SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION, APPEALS COURT RULES
The Oakland trial is the latest high-profile case involving social media companies like Meta, which have faced numerous lawsuits brought by individuals, school districts and state governments over the alleged impacts of social media use on children.
A ruling in another prominent case was delivered earlier this month when a state court in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $567 million and to overhaul its protections for teen users on Facebook and Instagram.
That followed a prior ruling from March which ordered Meta to pay $375 million for violating state law, with the company's total liability in the case at nearly $942 million.
Meta told FOX Business after the most recent ruling that it disagreed with the decision and vowed to appeal, explaining that the company is "confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts."
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FOX Business' Michael Sinkewicz, Sumner Park and Reuters contributed to this report.
Akcie Meta Platforms v pondělí klesly asi o 4 % kvůli rostoucím právním rizikům a pochybnostem o strategii v oblasti AI. Firma čelí žalobě od 29 generálních prokurátorů států.
Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stock fell about 4% on Monday as investors weighed mounting legal risks and questions about the company’s AI strategy. The decline also came as Communication Services ranked as the market’s weakest sector.
The Nasdaq fell 0.14%, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.38%.
California Trial Puts Meta’s Legal Risks In FocusMeta faces a case brought by 29 state attorneys general. They accuse the company of illegally collecting children’s data and misleading consumers about safety. They also allege that Facebook and Instagram included features designed to encourage addictive behavior among young users.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide the case. An eight-person advisory jury will also issue a nonbinding verdict.
Meta has said potential damages could reach $1.4 trillion. However, attorneys for the states have cited about $200 billion as a more likely figure, CNBC reported Monday.
The trial follows Meta’s recent losses in New Mexico. A jury there ordered the company to pay $375 million. A judge later directed another $567 million into an abatement fund. Meta plans to appeal.
The states also want Meta to delete certain children’s data and algorithms trained on that information. They are seeking the removal of features they describe as addictive.
Meta disputes the allegations. It has called the claims “unsubstantiated” and the financial demands “vastly disproportionate.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has warned that a large judgment could affect Meta’s ability to fund future investments. Meta’s AI spending could reach $145 billion this year.
McNamee Questions Meta’s AI PositionThe legal uncertainty comes as Elevation Partners’ Roger McNamee questions Meta’s position in the AI race. He called CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s open-source AI vision “science fiction that is untethered from reality.”
Speaking on CNBC, McNamee said Zuckerberg’s recent manifesto aims to create the impression that Meta is well positioned in AI while also improving his reputation.
McNamee also challenged broader assumptions about the AI boom. He urged investors to reconsider whether current large language models can deliver the economic transformation markets expect.
“If I owned the stocks today, I’d be sitting there and asking the question, ‘Are all my assumptions still sound?’” McNamee said. “Because I think a few of them aren’t.”
He argued that large language models rely on historical observations to generate the most likely response. That approach, he said, raises questions about how many economically valuable uses require an “average result.”
Meta Stock Remains Below Key Moving AveragesMeta shares remain under pressure from a technical perspective. The stock trades 4.2% below its 20-day simple moving average and 5.1% below its 50-day average.
It also sits 6.9% below its 100-day average and 9.7% below its 200-day average. In addition, the stock’s MACD remains below its signal line, pointing to weak momentum.
Meta shares have fallen 26.28% over the past 12 months. The stock’s 52-week range is $520.26 to $796.25.
Analysts Remain BullishWall Street remains positive despite the recent weakness. Meta carries a Buy consensus rating and an average price forecast of $767.42.
UBS maintained a Buy rating while lowering its price forecast to $715 on July 30. Baird kept an Outperform rating and cut its forecast to $750. Goldman Sachs maintained a Buy rating and lowered its forecast to $725.
META Price ActionMETA Price Action: Meta Platforms shares were down 4.11% at $565.63 at the time of publication Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Altrafin AG cut its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 95.3% during the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 563 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 11,497 shares during the quarter. Altrafin AG’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $317,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.
Several other large investors also recently bought and sold shares of META. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC lifted its stake in Meta Platforms by 17.4% in the first quarter. Ashton Thomas Securities LLC now owns 18,000 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $10,299,000 after acquiring an additional 2,670 shares during the last quarter. Keybank National Association OH increased its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 15.7% in the 4th quarter. Keybank National Association OH now owns 133,798 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $88,319,000 after purchasing an additional 18,169 shares during the last quarter. WMS Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the 4th quarter valued at $876,000. Consolidated Investment Group LLC lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 61.2% during the 4th quarter. Consolidated Investment Group LLC now owns 7,900 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $5,215,000 after purchasing an additional 3,000 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 3.8% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after purchasing an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $589.85 on Monday. The stock has a market cap of $1.50 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 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. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52-week low of $520.26 and a 52-week high of $796.25. The business has a 50-day moving average price of $595.94 and a 200 day moving average price of $620.04.
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 (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 analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $7.14 EPS. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current year.
Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 15th were given a dividend of $0.525 per share. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 7.91%.
Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total transaction of $1,268,023.68. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This trade represents a 65.03% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, COO Javier Olivan sold 3,348 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction on Monday, July 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $600.97, for a total transaction of $2,012,047.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer owned 9,498 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,708,013.06. This represents a 26.06% 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. Insiders sold a total of 17,772 shares of company stock worth $10,823,658 over the last ninety days. 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: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several equities analysts recently commented on the company. Scotiabank reissued a “sector perform” rating and issued a $600.00 target price on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $810.00 price target on shares of Meta Platforms in a research note on Monday, June 1st. DA Davidson decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $700.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Benchmark assumed coverage on Meta Platforms in a research report on Tuesday, June 2nd. They set a “buy” rating for the company. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $805.00 to $780.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, May 1st. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have issued a Hold rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.32.
Read Our Latest Analysis on META
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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Fisher Funds Management LTD decreased its stake in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 1.5% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 179,034 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 2,753 shares during the period. Meta Platforms makes up 2.9% of Fisher Funds Management LTD’s portfolio, making the stock its 5th biggest position. Fisher Funds Management LTD’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $100,848,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. RHL Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter valued at $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new position in Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $29,000. Safe Harbor Fiduciary LLC acquired a new position in Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $42,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in Meta Platforms in the first quarter worth about $36,000. Finally, Bayban lifted its holdings in Meta Platforms by 100.0% in the 1st quarter. Bayban now owns 70 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $40,000 after acquiring an additional 35 shares during the last quarter. 79.91% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.
Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several research firms have recently weighed in on META. Benchmark started coverage on shares of Meta Platforms in a research report on Tuesday, June 2nd. They set a “buy” rating for the company. Wall Street Zen cut shares of Meta Platforms from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Saturday, May 16th. Bank of America decreased their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $835.00 to $810.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Cantor Fitzgerald dropped their price target on Meta Platforms from $770.00 to $680.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Roth Capital reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, April 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Meta Platforms presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $785.32.
Check Out Our Latest Research Report on Meta Platforms
Insider Activity In other Meta Platforms news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of Meta Platforms 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 of the company’s stock, valued at $910,200. The trade was a 45.33% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total value of $280,780.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. This represents a 14.52% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders sold 36,280 shares of company stock valued at $22,075,696. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.
Meta Platforms Trading Down 0.9% Meta Platforms stock opened at $589.85 on Friday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 52 week low of $520.26 and a 52 week high of $796.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.50 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.22, a P/E/G ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $595.94 and a 200 day moving average price of $620.41.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced 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). The firm had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. Meta Platforms’s revenue for the quarter was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $7.14 earnings per share. Research analysts forecast that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 EPS for the current year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were given a dividend of $0.525 per share. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s payout ratio is presently 7.91%.
Meta Platforms News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale 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.
See Also Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Is Best Buy the AI Winner Hiding in the Electronics Aisle? Applied Materials Beat Everything but Wall Street’s Expectations for Margins Back From Orbit, Intuitive Machines’ Share Price Enters the Buy Zone Texas Roadhouse and Brinker International Have the Recipe Rivals Are Missing 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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BayBridge Capital Group ve 2. čtvrtletí snížil svůj podíl v Meta Platforms o 67,4 % a prodal 1 729 akcií. Po prodeji držel 837 akcií v hodnotě 471 000 USD.
BayBridge Capital Group LLC lowered its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 67.4% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 837 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,729 shares during the quarter. BayBridge Capital Group LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $471,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the period. Auto Owners Insurance Co raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the 4th quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $69,502,379,000 after purchasing an additional 105,154,977 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the 4th quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $59,963,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,395,763 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,806,712 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $34,734,628,000 after purchasing an additional 878,396 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors grew its holdings in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after purchasing an additional 310,947 shares during the period. 79.91% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.
Meta Platforms News Roundup Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Analysts remain constructive on Meta’s long-term outlook, citing 28% revenue growth, resilient advertising demand and additional monetization opportunities in WhatsApp. Some commentary argues that the market is assigning little value to future AI and messaging revenue streams. Meta Has $27 Billion That Isn’t On Its Balance Sheet Positive Sentiment: Meta released Glimmer, an open-weight AI model that users can download and run on their own hardware, supporting Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy of broadening access to AI. The move could strengthen developer adoption and Meta’s competitive position, although its financial payoff is uncertain. Meta’s open AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong Neutral Sentiment: Meta removed approximately 756,000 suspected under-16 accounts in Australia—462,000 from Instagram and 294,000 from Facebook—as it enforces the country’s youth social-media restrictions. The action demonstrates regulatory compliance but may raise moderation costs and reduce engagement among younger users. Meta says it has taken down 756,000 Australian teen accounts Neutral Sentiment: Institutional trading was mixed: Dodge & Cox increased its position by 1.47 million shares, while Sands Capital and Columbus Hill reduced their stakes. These transactions may influence sentiment but do not by themselves change Meta’s fundamentals. Dodge and Cox boosts Meta Platforms stake Negative Sentiment: A Ninth Circuit ruling removed a procedural barrier to more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging Meta’s product features harm young users. The court did not determine liability, but the decision allows the cases to proceed and adds potential litigation costs, damages and pressure to change platform design. How Serious Are Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits for Meta and Snap? Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that Meta’s roughly $145 billion AI investment plan and major data-center projects could produce diminishing returns, compress margins and weigh on free cash flow before monetization catches up. Meta: Diminishing Q2 CapEx ROI Is Alarming Negative Sentiment: Meta COO Javier Olivan disclosed additional sales under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, while several funds also trimmed holdings. Although planned insider sales are not necessarily bearish, they can add to near-term selling pressure. Meta COO insider stock sale Analyst Ratings Changes Several brokerages have recently commented on META. DA Davidson decreased their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $700.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Rosenblatt Securities cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $1,015.00 to $883.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. UBS Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $766.00 to $715.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their price objective on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt dropped their price objective on Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have assigned a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.
Get Our Latest Report on Meta Platforms
Meta Platforms Stock Down 0.9% Shares of META stock opened at $589.85 on Friday. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a 1-year low of $520.26 and a 1-year high of $796.25. The company has a market cap of $1.50 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.22, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.01 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 2.23 and a quick ratio of 2.23. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $595.94 and its 200 day moving average price is $620.41.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is presently 7.91%.
Insiders Place Their Bets In other Meta Platforms news, COO Javier Olivan sold 1,258 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $600.00, for a total transaction of $754,800.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 1,517 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $910,200. This trade represents a 45.33% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total value of $280,780.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. This represents a 14.52% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 36,280 shares of company stock valued at $22,075,696 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.
Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)
Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.
Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.
Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms Is Best Buy the AI Winner Hiding in the Electronics Aisle? Applied Materials Beat Everything but Wall Street’s Expectations for Margins Back From Orbit, Intuitive Machines’ Share Price Enters the Buy Zone Texas Roadhouse and Brinker International Have the Recipe Rivals Are Missing
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Meta zvažuje prodej přebytečné výpočetní kapacity v novém cloudovém byznysu s AI, protože její AI modely zatím nemají širší využití. Firma letos čeká kapitálové výdaje ve výši 130 až 145 miliard USD.
The interest in all things artificial intelligence (AI) in the stock market went back into overdrive in August. Unfortunately, Meta Platforms (META -0.86%) failed to join the party.
The company, led by founder Mark Zuckerberg, is investing heavily in AI but is not being rewarded by the market, and adoption has failed to materialize across most of its software services.
Now, Zuckerberg and the team are considering selling some of Meta's compute power in a new AI cloud business. Does that make the stock, now trading below $600, a buy? Here's my honest take.
Image source: Getty Images.
Last quarter, Meta spent $30 billion on capital expenditures, nearly doubling its capex year over year. For the full year, Meta expects to spend $130 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures, mainly related to artificial intelligence. Some of this will be used to advance its advertising platform, but the majority will go toward frontier research and inference capacity for AI models.
Right now, Meta's AI models do not see much external use, so it is already building up excess capacity in data centers that is not being utilized. Zuckerberg said that other AI companies have reached out to Meta Platforms to buy access to its compute capacity at a premium over the purchase price, although the exact financial details of the arrangement are unclear. However, if we compare it to recent deals signed by Space Exploration Technologies that are set to generate tens of billions in annual revenue, Meta could quickly grow this AI cloud business if it wants to turn on the spigot.
The risk arises because Meta is already struggling to identify internal use cases for its AI infrastructure. It could sell these services to third parties today in a similar move to SpaceX, CoreWeave, or Nebius Group, but eventually, the AI software providers are going to stick with the best-in-class hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services that can provide a comprehensive cloud service above just reselling compute, such as databases and other software. Meta is years away from doing this, if it even wants to.
Today's Change
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Solid core operations What all this means is that if Meta is already thinking of selling excess compute capacity to third parties, it is a bearish signal for the company. This means it cannot find ways to directly monetize the AI services it has spent tens of billions developing. According to third-party estimates, Meta's AI chatbots have just a sliver of market share, losing out to competitors like Alphabet's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude.
I believe Wall Street is right to be bearish on all the investments Meta is making in AI. However, it still has a phenomenal advertising business across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp that is seeing accelerating growth due to improvements in targeting technologies. Last quarter, Meta's revenue grew 28% year over year to $61 billion, mainly driven by advertising growth. It couldn't outpace expense growth on AI and Reality Labs (Meta's wearables division is losing billions every quarter), with operating margin falling from 43% a year ago to 31% in Q2 2026, but it can help stabilize the ship as more money is spent every quarter on AI capital expenditures.
Data by YCharts.
My honest take on Meta stock For the first time in a long while, Meta's operating earnings fell last quarter. Over the last 12 months, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were $87 billion and are likely to continue falling over the next few years if capital expenditures continue to grow without an AI business model in place. Why? Because there will be massive amounts of depreciation flowing through to Meta's income statement. Advertising revenue is growing quickly, but it is already unable to keep up with these rising expenses.
The stock trades at a discount to many big technology peers, with a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 22. However, Meta's earnings are likely to shrink in the years ahead unless it reverses these aggressive AI investments or finds a way to monetize said investments, generating tens of billions in revenue overnight. I have my doubts that this will happen, which is why I don't think Meta stock is a buy, even as it trades below $600.
Meta sice slíbila mazat obtěžující videa natočená brýlemi AI, ale na Instagramu jich po měsíci stále zůstávaly desítky. Firma už smazala část obsahu a blokuje i vyhledávání výrazů jako „rizz“ a „cold approach“.
Meta said it would remove harassing videos filmed with its AI glasses, but its content moderation so far has been uneven, with dozens of videos remaining on its Instagram platform.
Meta; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
"Are you a secret code?" a young man in Meta glasses asks a woman in a tank top on the sidewalk. "What do you mean, 'a secret code?'" she responds, seemingly confused as the man's glasses record her. "Because I'm trying to crack you," he says.
The interaction, filmed by content creator Colin Allen for his Instagram account @thatiscolin, is one of dozens of similar videos that I found from popular and verified accounts on the platform in the month after Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said Meta would remove "harassing" pickup line videos filmed with Meta glasses.
After I sent Meta a link to 20-plus pickup and other harassing "prank" videos from different accounts, the company removed the "secret code" video and eight others. Allen, who describes himself as a "lifestyle and comedy creator" and not a pickup artist, had used the same line to different women in several other videos, which remain up. He didn't respond to my attempts to contact him.
An Instagram account that does some pickup line content, including asking women on the sidewalk, "Are you a secret code? Because I'm trying to crack you."
Instagram / @thatiscolin
Videos from pickup artists using Meta glasses to approach women in public have emerged as a genre on Instagram's Reels and TikTok, with some of the popular videos racking up millions of views. These videos of men trying pickup lines on women on the street, along with pranks on cashiers or service workers, are tagged on Instagram as being shot on "Meta glasses."
Being associated with that kind of icky content can't be good for the reputation of the devices, which some people are already referring to as "creep glasses."
Tracy Clayton, a spokesperson for Meta, told me that thousands of pieces of content have already been removed, and several large accounts have been taken down. The recent enforcement action falls under Meta's existing Community Standards on bullying and harassment, which broadly forbid content that sexualizes other adults or sexually harasses people. Additionally, search terms for "rizz" or "cold approach," common pickup slang, are now blocked in search.
Meta's Instagram blocks the search terms for pickup artist content like "rizz" and "cold approach" (meaning to approach a stranger).
Instagram / screenshot
My last month spent in pickup-line video land has shown me that Meta's enforcement has been uneven in the weeks since Mosseri's remarks. "We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can," Mosseri said in mid-July.
When initially reporting on Mosseri's comments, I found two large pickup artist accounts that had been deactivated as part of the recent enforcement wave. A few days after my article was published last month, one of those accounts was reactivated (a Meta spokesperson said this was by error, and the account was re-banned after I brought it to their attention).
Carolina Are, a digital criminologist based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that Meta and Mosseri's response to the harassing AI glasses videos highlights isn't enough.
"There is a backlash, and then Meta tends to minimize its own responsibility for it. They talk about how this is user-generated behavior or an error in enforcement," Are said. "But they don't recognize the systemic issues that are causing that to happen, and they take no accountability for what their policies or infrastructure have done to enable that behavior," Are said.
These pickup and prank videos made with Meta glasses aren't exclusive to Instagram; they also exist on YouTube and TikTok.
A spokesperson for TikTok told me that it has policies against harassing content. After I sent a list of four videos of pickup artists who also posted on Instagram, TikTok took down two of them, citing its policy on bullying and sexual harassment.
Boot Bullwinkle, a representative for YouTube, told me it has policies against certain kinds of harassment and dangerous prank videos. YouTube has been dealing with moderation issues around street pranks and pickup artists for years. After I sent four examples of channels that posted Meta glasses pickup content, YouTube said it took down "several" of the videos and removed one of the channels from its monetization program.
A headache of its own making
A pair of Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses. Mark Zuckerberg said sales of Meta's AI glasses tripled last year and he believes they are "some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history."
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Mosseri personally delivering the message that Instagram will take down this specific kind of content is unique among video platforms. That may be because of Instagram's unique relationship with the Meta glasses: Not only are these unsavory videos a headache of its own making, but they also risk harming the public perception of a product that Meta invested big bucks in building and marketing.
Plenty of people are buying up Meta's AI glasses. Sales have grown since their launch in 2021, topping 7 million units in 2025, more than triple the previous year. Meta is the early leader in the smart glasses race.
They've been a bright spot for Meta's money-losing Reality Labs department, which faced layoffs this year. They're also key to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI bet.
"I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you're kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you're working with, or competing against," Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call.
The recent backlash — remember when Kylie Jenner's Instagram comments were flooded with people calling her signature Meta glasses "pervert glasses"? — presents a thorn in Meta's side.
"In many cases, the public-facing rules that users see are vague enough to be open to the discretion of the platform to make those kinds of shifts and changes at any time," said Sarah T. Roberts, faculty director and cofounder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
Meta is betting AI could supercharge its moderation efforts. Zuckerberg and other execs have long said the old way of doing things, leaning heavily on third-party human contractors, doesn't scale. The theory goes that AI can be trained to autonomously flag violating content. In June, Meta told the Financial Times that initial tests showed that its AI systems made fewer mistakes than human moderators and flagged more violating content. The jury's still out on whether that will prove to be the case long term.
Deactivated one day, reactivated the nextAfter seeking out and interacting with some of these pickup line videos in Reels, I started getting served more and more of them. I no longer needed search terms to find them; my Reels feed was filled nearly entirely with that genre of content.
One creator whose account was active weeks after Mosseri's remarks is Caren Babaknia. He has 174,000 followers and posts videos of himself driving up to women he identifies in the caption as escorts and talking to them while wearing Meta glasses.
An account that posted multiple videos of paying women that appear to be sex workers to watch a video of memes and gambling ads on his laptop.
Instagram / @carenview
In one video captioned "Wasting ESCORTS time by making them watch brainrot" he offers a woman who approached his car $50 in exchange for watching a video on his laptop of brainrot memes. The woman agrees, and he plays the video, which includes an ad for a gambling app. He hands her the cash.
I spoke with Babaknia on the phone to get his perspective on videos made with Meta glasses. He told me he believes the women in his videos are aware that he was filming them because his content is so viral that they knew him.
He voiced disdain for pickup artists with Meta glasses, however.
"I think the rizz content is very cringe," he told me. "I think those are normal girls and they don't deserve to be videoed without their consent."
After including one of Babaknia's videos in the list I recently sent to Meta, his account was deactivated the following morning. Babaknia told me that he was going to appeal. A day later, his account was back up with the videos restored.
It's not unusual for changes to enforcement in content moderation to take time to implement at scale. But as Meta glasses get increasingly popular, it seems likely that Instagram will face pressure to deal with this — and potentially new forms of bad behavior — more and more.
"It's not like they just started those platforms yesterday," said Roberts from UCLA. "It's not like they don't have 20 years now of understanding how people will behave at the most depraved levels if given a chance."
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Katie Notopoulos
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Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture. She covers topics such as internet culture, Big Tech, retail, AI, parenting in the digital age, and personal tech.Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review. Based in New York, you can reach her by email [email protected] or find her on Twitter. Bluesky, and Threads @katienotopoulos.Some of her stories include:
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Meta se spojila s NABTU, aby rozšířila zásobu kvalifikovaných pracovníků pro výstavbu a údržbu americké AI infrastruktury. Partnerství jí zpřístupní učňovské a školicí programy po celé USA.
Meta is partnering with North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) to expand the pipeline of skilled workers needed to build and maintain America’s rapidly growing AI infrastructure.
The partnership, announced Wednesday, will give Meta access to NABTU’s network of apprenticeship and training programs while helping connect skilled trades workers with Meta projects across the U.S.
"The Meta partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions means avenues of communication are open, access to our recruitment and training pipeline of skilled craft will become available and we'll be able to deploy craft on an as-needed basis to Meta projects anywhere across America," Sean McGarvey, president of NABTU, told FOX Business.
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The partnership will give Meta access to NABTU’s network of apprenticeship and training programs. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Demand for skilled trades workers has grown rapidly as tech companies invest in data centers and other infrastructure needed to power AI.
McGarvey said the demand is being felt across a range of trades, including HVAC technicians, laborers, operating engineers and others.
NABTU represents more than 3.2 million skilled craft professionals in the U.S. and Canada through an alliance of 14 national and international unions.
Its unions and contractor partners operate more than 1,900 apprenticeship and training facilities across North America and invest more than $3 billion annually in training and education, according to the announcement from Meta.
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McGarvey said the demand for skilled trades workers is being felt across a range of trades. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
NABTU has roughly 300,000 people enrolled in its registered apprenticeship system, according to McGarvey, who added that number could grow significantly.
"We currently have that 300,000, and we can ramp that up to a million, based on demand," he said.
Meta President Dina Powell McCormick said skilled trades workers will be critical to building the infrastructure needed for the U.S. to compete in AI.
"We are so proud to work with NABTU on this partnership," Powell McCormick said in a statement. "I have had the privilege of working with President McGarvey since I took on this new role, and we are excited to work together on skilled trades.
"This is an important moment, and these men and women of the skilled trades are building the American infrastructure needed to ensure America’s values lead the AI race globally."
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A high-tech data center is pictured here. Demand for skilled trades workers is growing as the country’s AI infrastructure buildout expands. (iStock)
The agreement comes as Meta expands its investment in U.S. infrastructure and workforce development.
The tech company said the partnership builds on its Future Is For Everyone Fund, which is aimed at investing in communities, including teachers, first responders and energy and water infrastructure.
McGarvey said the jobs created by the AI boom could last well beyond the initial construction of data centers because the facilities will need regular upgrades.
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"The need for skilled craft on a constant basis in these digital facilities is ongoing long after initial construction is complete," he said.
Baskin Financial Services ve 2. čtvrtletí zvýšila svou pozici v Meta Platforms o 34,4 % na 53 073 akcií v hodnotě 29,895 milionu USD. Meta tvoří 2,4 % portfolia fondu.
Baskin Financial Services Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 34.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 53,073 shares of the social networking company’s stock after buying an additional 13,587 shares during the period. Meta Platforms comprises 2.4% of Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 23rd largest position. Baskin Financial Services Inc.’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $29,895,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other large investors also recently made changes to their positions in META. RHL Group LLC purchased a new stake in Meta Platforms during the 4th quarter worth $28,000. Strategic Wealth Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Meta Platforms in the fourth quarter valued at about $29,000. Niles Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the fourth quarter worth about $29,000. Axiom Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Meta Platforms during the first quarter worth about $36,000. Finally, Bayban boosted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 100.0% in the first quarter. Bayban now owns 70 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $40,000 after buying an additional 35 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several brokerages recently commented on META. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Wednesday, July 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price target on Meta Platforms from $815.00 to $725.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial lowered their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $840.00 to $770.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Robert W. Baird reduced their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Monness Crespi & Hardt decreased their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $890.00 to $730.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $785.32.
View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Meta Platforms
Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.84, for a total value of $5,589,088.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,014,978.24. The trade was a 41.08% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, insider Curtis J. Mahoney sold 2,079 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, May 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $609.92, for a total value of $1,268,023.68. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,118 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $681,890.56. This represents a 65.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 38,407 shares of company stock valued at $23,391,097. 13.53% of the stock is owned by insiders.
Key Meta Platforms News Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Meta officially launched its standalone Facebook Creator Studio app for iOS, offering creators AI-generated growth advice and community-management tools. The rollout could support engagement, creator retention and future monetization. Facebook officially rolls out its standalone Creator Studio app with AI tools for creators Positive Sentiment: Meta and Nvidia released open-weight AI models as U.S. technology companies seek to compete with Chinese labs. Meta’s open-source strategy may accelerate adoption, improve its advertising products and challenge higher-cost AI rivals. Meta and Nvidia plant very firm flag in open-weight AI race Positive Sentiment: Several analysts continue to cite Meta’s strong advertising business, AI-driven improvements in ad conversions and long-term AI optionality. The consensus price target remains substantially above the recent trading level, providing a potential valuation support. The Market Shaved 10% Off Meta Over a Month Neutral Sentiment: Meta’s planned acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus is being unwound after regulatory pressure, with Manus returning to independent operations. The development limits Meta’s acquisition strategy but removes uncertainty surrounding the transaction. AI startup Manus to resume independent operations as deal with Meta unwinds Negative Sentiment: A German advocacy group filed a criminal complaint alleging that Meta’s AI smart glasses violate privacy laws. The complaint adds regulatory risk to Meta’s growing hardware and wearable-AI strategy. German advocacy group lodges criminal complaint over Meta AI glasses Negative Sentiment: Meta began trial proceedings against claims from 29 U.S. states that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to children. A loss could result in significant damages, platform changes and thousands of additional lawsuits. Meta, 29 states head to court in youth social media litigation Negative Sentiment: Investors remain concerned that AI infrastructure spending of up to $145 billion in 2026 is compressing margins and free cash flow. Recent commentary also highlighted weaker technical momentum, leaving META more vulnerable to selling pressure. Meta Q2: Strong Growth, But The AI Bill Is Becoming Hard To Ignore Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ META opened at $578.85 on Thursday. The company has a quick ratio of 2.23, a current ratio of 2.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $520.26 and a fifty-two week high of $796.25. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $596.66 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $621.07. The firm has a market cap of $1.47 trillion, a PE ratio of 21.80, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.25.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $7.14 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Meta Platforms Announces Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Investors of record on Monday, June 15th were issued a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.
About Meta Platforms (Free Report)
Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.
Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.
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Meta uvedla, že v Austrálii smazala více než 750 000 účtů podezřelých z toho, že je používají uživatelé mladší 16 let. Zásah přichází před očekávaným zpřísněním vymáhání zákazu sociálních sítí pro teenagery.
Item 1 of 2 A Facebook message is displayed on a mobile phone, as Meta begins blocking new sign-ups for anyone under 16 in Australia, in this picture illustration taken December 3, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/Illustration/File Photo
[1/2]A Facebook message is displayed on a mobile phone, as Meta begins blocking new sign-ups for anyone under 16 in Australia, in this picture illustration taken December 3, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more
SummaryCompaniesMeta releases account deletion data for period from December to JuneLaw banning social media for under-16s went live on December 10Regulator says platforms face tougher action over complianceParliamentary inquiry to hear evidence about ban on FridaySYDNEY, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Facebook and Instagram owner Meta (META.O), opens new tab said on Thursday it had taken down more than 750,000 accounts it suspected were held by Australians aged under 16 since a world-first ban on teen accounts, and promised more action in the face of possible regulatory intervention.
The company said it had deactivated 462,000 suspect Instagram accounts and 294,000 suspect Facebook accounts from just before the Australian social media ban went live in December to June, up from 331,000 Instagram accounts and 173,000 Facebook accounts it said it had removed by January.
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The world's largest social media company has said it wants to comply with a law it and other platforms have vocally opposed, just as Australia's internet regulator considers an enforcement lawsuit against platforms, including some that Meta owns, that it says have failed to take sufficient steps to comply with the law.
No other platforms have released compliance data that matches the date range given by Meta, but Australian government figures and multiple independent studies have shown more than eight in 10 under-16s were still on social media in the ban's first three months.
The Australian government proposed the landmark law, which came into force on December 10, on concerns about social media's impact on the physical and mental health of children and young teens.
With other countries around the world considering similar age-restrictions, Australia has accused the platforms of intentionally setting the ban up to fail, and has introduced a law to double the maximum penalty for non-compliance to A$99 million ($69.75 million) and give the regulator greater document discovery powers.
PARLIAMENTARY HEARING ON FRIDAYRepresentatives of Meta, TikTok, YouTube owner Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Snap's Snapchat (SNAP.N), opens new tab are scheduled to give evidence in a parliamentary inquiry about the changes on Friday, as are regulatory and government officials.
"Enforcement is ongoing, and these numbers will continue to grow," Meta said in a statement.
"We share the Australian Government's goal of ensuring young people have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we are meeting our obligations under the law," the company added.
A 2025 Australian trial of age assurance technology found products on the market could effectively support a ban. Most large platforms, including Meta's, rolled out photo-based age estimation software, although they say they typically first subject users to age inference, or assuming a person's age based on their online activity.
Meta said it was using AI to analyse user profiles for "contextual clues that an account may belong to someone under 16, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades" and to analyse reports about suspected underage accounts. The company added that it had removed the option for a person to make more attempts to set up an account if their previous account was deleted.
($1 = 1.4194 Australian dollars)
Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Kate Mayberry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Meta za poslední měsíc klesla o 10,47 % po zklamání za 2. čtvrtletí, kdy EPS 6,18 USD minul odhad 7,22 USD. Tržby 60,80 miliardy USD naopak překonaly očekávání.
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Meta Platforms currently trades at $599.12, while Wall Street’s consensus price target sits at $756.95, implying roughly 26.3% upside.
The company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads spent much of the past year as one of the Magnificent Seven‘s steadier performers. A bruising Q2 report and rising anxiety over AI capex have sliced Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) into the lower end of its 12-month range. The gap between price and consensus deserves unpacking, because the Street’s highest analyst thinks it should be far wider.
The Q2 Miss That Sliced 10% From the Stock Meta fell 10.47% over the past month after a Q2 print that snapped a six-quarter EPS beat streak. Revenue of $60.80 billion beat expectations by 0.85% and grew 27.96% year over year, but EPS of $6.18 missed the $7.22 estimate by 14.42%. The miss stemmed from $2.40 billion in youth-related legal charges and $1.18 billion in severance from a May headcount reduction of roughly 8,000 employees. Operating margin compressed to 31% from 43%, and free cash flow collapsed 91.31% to $784 million as quarterly capex hit $30.12 billion.
Shares dropped from $597.37 to $527.50 in the hour after the release before clawing back part of the loss. It was company-specific weakness. Alphabet rallied on strong Cloud numbers the same week, and the S&P 500 gained through the stretch. Meta raised the low end of FY2026 total expenses to $165 billion to $169 billion and lifted its remaining-year tax rate assumption to 15% to 17%.
Why Analysts Refuse to Downgrade Sell-side conviction has barely budged. Of the 62 analysts covering Meta, 55 rate it Buy, 7 rate it Hold, and none rate it Sell. The $756.95 average target still implies solid upside despite the miss.
The most aggressive call comes from Barton Crockett at Rosenblatt Securities, who maintains a Buy with a Street-high $1,117 target, implying roughly 86% returns over the next year. The thesis: layering autonomous agents onto WhatsApp’s business messaging footprint could power automated customer support, storefronts, and sales execution for millions of merchants at high margin.
Meta’s nuclear Power Purchase Agreements with Oklo, Vistra, TerraPower, and Constellation, totaling over 7.7 gigawatts offers a way to de-risk the AI infrastructure buildout without straining the balance sheet. Ad ranking gains are already showing up in the numbers (an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook from the new Meta Generative Recommender) plus a Family of Apps base of 3.60 billion daily active people. The bull case argues the market is punishing a one-quarter cost surge rather than repricing long-term earnings power.
Peers Held Up as Meta Slid Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at $343.80 versus a $428.04 target for roughly 24.5% upside. Shares are down 8.96% on the week but up 71.53% over the past year on a Q2 blowout. Consensus tilts heavily Buy, with 58 Buys and 6 Holds. Wall Street sees slightly less upside here than at Meta.
Pinterest (NYSE:PINS) trades at $23.75 against a $28.97 target for about 22.0% upside. The stock is down 30.54% year over year despite a solid Q2 beat, hurt by retail-ad exposure. Ratings split roughly evenly between Buy and Hold, with the smallest implied upside in the group.
Snap (NYSE:SNAP) trades at $5.51 versus a $7.28 target for 32.1% upside. Ratings are far weaker: mostly Holds, a handful of Buys, and three Sell-side ratings. Shares are down 31.72% year to date.
Snap holds the largest consensus upside at 32%, but on shakier conviction. Meta ranks second on consensus math yet carries the strongest sentiment tilt, and Rosenblatt’s Street-high call is the single largest target across the peer set.
How Far Behind the S&P 500 Meta Has Fallen Meta shares trade at $599.12 with a $756.95 consensus target and 26.3% implied upside. The recent stretch shows the dislocation: Meta is off 10.47% over the past month, 9.08% year to date, and 21.52% over the past year, while the S&P 500 is up 2.07% for the month, 13% year to date, and 21.17% over the year.
Valuation supports the bull view: trailing P/E of 22, forward P/E near 18, and FCF yield near 3.5% before the AI capex cycle peaks. Polymarket traders assign just 42% probability that Meta closes this week above $600, so short-term crowd sentiment is far more cautious than the consensus target.
Weighing the Bull and Bear Cases The bull thesis rests on the AI capex cycle producing the returns management projects. Ad ranking gains are already visible, over one million businesses are using Meta business agents weekly on WhatsApp and Messenger, and if even two of the four monetization vectors (recommender lift, agents, glasses, and enterprise compute) scale on schedule, the $756.95 consensus and even Rosenblatt’s $1,117 target look reasonable.
The bear case sees this as the top of a spending arms race that eats operating income faster than AI can monetize it. Free cash flow collapsed 91% last quarter, youth-litigation trials are queued through year-end, and FY2026 expense guidance of $165 billion to $169 billion leaves no cushion for another surprise.
On balance, Meta is compounding revenue at 28% and funding its future entirely with cash from core apps. That setup warrants close monitoring, particularly on any further weakness in the shares.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Federální odvolací soud v Kalifornii umožnil pokračovat tisícům žalob na Meta, Snap, TikTok, YouTube a Roblox kvůli údajnému vytváření závislosti mladých lidí na jejich službách. Soud odmítl obranu podle Section 230 jako předčasnou.
ToplineA federal appeals court rejected an attempt by social media companies to dismiss thousands of lawsuits alleging young people were addicted to their services, insisting the appeal using Section 230 of the Communications Act was improperly made and allowing the claims to move forward.
An appeals court ruled an appeal was made too early in the process to use Section 230 of the Communications Act as a defense.
dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Key FactsIn a brief opinion issued on Monday, the California-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal brought by numerous social media companies, including Meta, Snap and the owners of TikTok, YouTube and Roblox.
Section 230 is a clause of the Communications Act that largely provides immunity from liability to online service providers based on what third-party content other people post on their platforms.
However, the court ruled that Section 230 only provides a defense for liability, “not an immunity from suit”—meaning Meta and the other companies appealed too early in the lawsuit for the court to have “appellate jurisdiction.”
The appeal was part of a massive case that consolidated thousands of lawsuits from individuals, state attorneys general and school districts.
Key BackgroundIn March, Meta and Google lost the first of the social media addiction cases that went to trial. A California jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages, as well as another $3 million in punitive damages, to a 20-year-old woman who argued she became addicted to their platforms at a young age due to their designs. The bellwether verdict came only one day after Meta lost a state trial in New Mexico, where the social media giant was ordered to pay out $375 million for misleading users about social media’s impact on children’s mental health. The state court hit the company with another $567 million fine last week after ruling it had created a “public nuisance.” However, Meta also notched a rare win when one teenage plaintiff dropped a similar lawsuit in Florida last month. The same teenager already secured settlements with TikTok, Snap and YouTube, the New York Times reported.
Further ReadingMeta And Google Found Liable In Social Media Addiction Trial (Forbes)
Meta Must Pay $375 Million Over Allegedly Enabling Child Exploitation (Forbes)
Bellwether Lawsuit Against Meta Over Social Media Addiction Is Dropped (New York Times)
Mark Zuckerberg uvedl, že Meta chce zpřístupnit superinteligenci široce a zdarma miliardám lidí, místo aby ji soustředila do rukou několika firem. Akcie Meta v pondělí stouply o 1,3 %.
Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined a vision for artificial intelligence centered on making so-called superintelligence broadly available to individuals, arguing that the technology should expand human capabilities rather than primarily replace workers.
In a 6,500-word essay titled “The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future,” published on Monday, Zuckerberg said advanced AI could create opportunities in entrepreneurship, scientific research, education and personal productivity.
“We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Zuckerberg argued that concentrating advanced AI among a small number of companies, governments or individuals could create risks by placing too much economic and political power in limited hands. Instead, he said Meta wants to distribute AI capabilities widely and give individuals greater control over how the technology is used.
A central part of his argument is that AI’s biggest contribution should be invention rather than automation. He said future systems could help people discover medicines, develop businesses, create products and conduct scientific research, while enabling individuals to pursue ideas that previously required larger teams or significant capital.
“I predict that this will not only lead to much greater economic growth, but also more employment over time rather than less,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Zuckerberg also described a future in which people have personal AI agents that understand their goals and interests and assist with areas such as health, careers, finances and hobbies. He said AI could also provide personalized tutoring, creative tools and support for scientific research.
Meta plans to offer free AI tools accessible to billions of people, while users seeking additional computing capacity could pay for greater access, Zuckerberg wrote.
He also rejected the idea that the development of increasingly capable AI should require concentrating power among a small group of institutions.
“The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will it be a tool that empowers everyone?”
Zuckerberg acknowledged that superintelligence will bring significant challenges, but argued that broad access could help distribute its benefits while limiting the risks associated with concentrated control.
“Superintelligence holds the promise of giving everyone that power, and building a positive future for everyone,” he wrote.
Shares of Meta traded up 1.3% at about $600 on Monday, down about 9% so far this year.
Meta představila Muse Glimmer, 30miliardový AI model s otevřenými váhami, který zvládne běžet na Macu nebo PC na jediném spotřebitelském GPU. Zuckerberg zároveň prosazuje dostupnou „superinteligenci“ pro všechny.
Meta’s CEO has shared his vision for AI as the company releases its latest model.
Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,510-word essay Monday (Aug. 10) outlining a future where everyone has “free or affordable access” to what he calls Meta’s superintelligence tools, including personal artificial intelligence (AI) agents.
“For everyone to be part of the future, everyone must have the ability to use superintelligence to improve their lives and shape the world,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We will offer free versions that will be accessible to billions of people.”
Sharing the technology that widely, Zuckerberg argued, will “check and balance the power of institutions,” governments and businesses included.
“Most other labs are focused on building AI for companies, governments, or other institutions. So if those labs lead, then the balance of power will favor larger institutions over individuals,” Zuckerberg added.
The essay also calls for deeper collaboration between AI labs and the government, letting the government examine AI models earlier in the development process.
“This way, the government gains a security capability without restricting or delaying individuals’ access to personal superintelligence or causing an imbalance of power,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Meanwhile, Meta is instituting a new governance system which gives its board the authority to establish safety criteria for AI models and determine if new models meet those standards.
“I do not think it is in my, Meta’s, or the world’s best interests for me or anyone else to be a sole decision maker on how superintelligence is deployed,” he wrote, adding that there should be “an industrywide version of this process.”
Also Monday, Meta debuted Muse Glimmer, the next model from its Meta Superintelligence Labs, saying it was open sourcing the model weights.
“Muse Glimmer is a 30-billion-parameter model optimized for always-on local agent workflows,” the company said in its announcement. “It’s small enough to run on a Mac or PC with a single consumer GPU, enabling use cases that range from local agents and function calling, to local coding, and LLM-as-a-judge evaluation.”
Meta last week introduced the beta version of a terminal coding agent called Muse Code, powered by Muse Spark 1.2, a coding-focused model update.
As PYMNTS noted at the time, the company has been facing pressure to show it can monetize AI tools such as its Muse Spark model and to provide meaningful growth to justify its enormous capital expenditures on AI.
Meta plánuje v roce 2026 kapitálové výdaje ve výši 130 až 145 miliard USD, hlavně do datacenter a infrastruktury pro AI. Zuckerberg chce, aby byla pokročilá AI široce dostupná a levná.
Mark Zuckerberg has a simple answer to one of the biggest questions in AI: Who should get superintelligence? Everyone.
In a 6,500-word essay published Monday, the Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) CEO argued against concentrating increasingly powerful AI in the hands of a few companies, governments or institutions. Instead, he wants Meta to make advanced AI broadly available, including free or affordable versions for billions of people.
The vision comes with an enormous infrastructure bill.
Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — expects to spend $130 billion to $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026. That includes investments in data centers and other infrastructure. The company spent $31.1 billion on capital expenditures in the second quarter alone.
Not all of that spending is specifically for Zuckerberg’s vision of personal superintelligence. But the scale of the investment shows how seriously Meta is preparing for an AI future in which increasingly powerful models become part of everyday life.
Zuckerberg Wants AI in Everyone’s HandsZuckerberg’s argument is broader than simply making another chatbot available. His central concern is that if increasingly powerful AI is controlled by only a small number of institutions, it could concentrate too much power in too few hands.
Meta’s strategy is to distribute that technology through products used by billions of people.
That approach became more tangible Monday when Meta released Muse Glimmer, a smaller AI model designed to run on personal computers using a single graphics card. Zuckerberg also said a more advanced Muse Spark 1.2 model is coming soon.
Getting there will not be cheap.
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The $145 Billion QuestionMeta’s second-quarter revenue rose 28% to $60.8 billion, but operating expenses jumped 55%. Free cash flow — the cash left after running the business and paying for capital investments — fell to just $784 million, from $8.55 billion a year earlier. That doesn’t mean Meta is suddenly struggling financially. It ended June with $90.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. But the numbers show the financial cost of its AI push is already becoming significant.
Zuckerberg is effectively betting that today’s infrastructure spending will create tomorrow’s AI platform.
And Meta has an advantage that many AI rivals lack: distribution. Its Family of Apps reached 3.6 billion daily active people in June, giving Meta an enormous audience to which it can introduce AI products. That makes Zuckerberg’s argument about access more than a philosophical statement. It is also a business strategy.
Meta wants to build the models, spend heavily on the infrastructure behind them and put those models in front of billions of people. For META investors, the question is no longer whether Zuckerberg is willing to spend heavily on AI. He clearly is.
The bigger question is whether making superintelligence affordable can generate enough value to justify the extraordinary cost of building it.
But while Zuckerberg sees personal AI as a tool to boost careers, businesses, education and creative work, Meta’s own upheaval highlights the darker side of the AI boom: tech companies are increasingly cutting jobs as AI takes on work once done by employees.
In May, Meta laid off more than 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, underscoring how AI is reshaping the jobs it was supposed to help.
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SummaryMeta Platforms remains a "Buy" as its valuation is compelling, despite recent capex-driven selloffs and technical weakness.Q2 revenue grew 28% YoY, driven by Family of Apps, but free cash flow contracted sharply due to $31 billion in capex.Management guides for Q3 revenue of $61–$64 billion, with AI investments expected to drive future FCF and EPS acceleration post-2026.Key risks include capex ROI uncertainty, digital ad cyclicality, litigation overhang, and a challenging technical setup with overhead resistance. Getty Images
It wasn't so much earnings season for the Mag 7, but capex season. Shares of Meta Platforms (META) fell yet again after the social media giant reported hefty FY 2026 executed and planned long-term investments. Still, the stock
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Meta představila Muse Glimmer, otevřený AI model, který běží na Macu nebo PC a zvládá složité uvažování i agentní úkoly. Zuckerberg zároveň oznámil, že brzy přijde i otevřená verze Muse Spark.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images Mark Zuckerberg is launching a new AI model and a vision for a more open form of superintelligence.
The social media giant unveiled Muse Glimmer on Monday and said it is an open-weight, agentic model small enough to run on a Mac or PC. Open-weight means users can download and customize the model to run it locally instead of in the cloud.
Meta also plans to release an open-weight version of Muse Spark, its most powerful AI model, soon, Zuckerberg added.
Meta said it trained Glimmer on Muse Spark using a process known as distillation, where a smaller model learns from a larger "teacher" model.
Meta said that Glimmer, the latest model rolled out by the company's Superintelligence division led by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, can perform complex reasoning and handle a broad range of agentic tasks while running on a consumer device with a single graphics card.
Glimmer can break a task, such as coding or admin work, into steps. Meta said it "performs strongly for its size class" on several benchmarks for large language models.
The Meta CEO also published a 6,500-word essay from Zuckerberg making a positive case for superintelligent AI.
In the essay, titled "The Future Is for Everyone," Zuckerberg wrote that it was "surprising" that the discourse from so many of the people developing AI was so "filled with doom."
The Meta CEO said it would be wrong to restrict access to superintelligent AI to a handful of individuals or companies on safety grounds.
"Some argue that superintelligence itself or a small set of experts who control it should decide what is best for humanity. We disagree," Zuckerberg wrote.
Meta's model launch comes as the tech industry is embroiled in a debate over open weight AI.
Last month, nearly every major AI lab — including Meta — signed a public letter advocating for open-weight models, after the US government suggested it could sanction Chinese open models that were found to have distilled AI models built by their US rivals.
"Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data," Zuckerberg wrote in his essay. "US policy must reduce this additional friction if we want American open source models to lead over time."
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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OpenAI, Anthropic a Meta uvedly, že jejich AI modely při bezpečnostním testování neoprávněně získaly přístup k internetu. Všechny incidenty souvisely se stejným testovacím prostředím startupu Irregular.
Over the past two weeks, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta all revealed that their AI models went rogue during routine security testing. In explaining what happened, the companies each mentioned the same small Israeli startup: Irregular.
Founded three years ago and based in Tel Aviv, Irregular is a niche player in artificial intelligence, backed with $80 million from Sequoia and Redpoint Ventures and valued last year at $450 million. Its technology serves as a sort of cybersecurity test bed for AI models.
With the leading models becoming ever more powerful, their ability to act in malicious ways is turning into a major threat for corporations and governments, especially as the risk involves hacking into critical computer systems and infrastructure. The recent exploits at OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta all involved their AI models accessing websites that should have been off-limits as part of the cybersecurity testing.
Irregular's name kept coming up because it was identified as hosting the so-called evaluation testbed. OpenAI said in a blog post on Aug. 4 that Irregular's testing ground contained an unspecified "misconfiguration," that "allowed models to access the public internet." Anthropic said in its post a week prior that the company notified Irregular a few days after it began analyzing data that its Claude model may have "accessed the internet."
Meta, which is way behind the other two in its effort to compete at the frontier, was the latest to disclose an AI model hacking a third-party system by accessing the internet. A spokesperson said in a statement this week that the company learned about the matter from Irregular and is investigating.
Meta "will issue a full retrospective once we have all the facts," the spokesperson said.
Irregular told CNBC in a statement that the incidents were all derived from the "same evaluation-environment issue" that was first disclosed by Anthropic, and that the company is developing a white paper "to share best practices for containment and securely running cyber evals."
The situation "did not involve a sandbox escape or a sophisticated cyber action," the company said, adding that "there are no current open issues."
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The security incidents underscore the rapidly evolving nature of AI and the pressure that's on the model developers to establish guardrails around their powerful technology with the help of a limited number of companies that specialize in particular corners of the market. Those players include experts in data training and annotation, running evaluations to deduce a model's capabilities, and operating security tests intended to find weak spots that bad actors could exploit, said Sundeep Bhimireddy, the head of AI at enterprise startup Von.
Irregular is one of the few entities with the technical chops required to help foundation model makers conduct cutting-edge security testing, Bhimireddy said. Others he mentioned are the non-profit METR and the Apollo Research public benefit corporation.
"When they are testing these models, they don't want to grade their own homework," Bhimireddy said. "They want independent testing that needs to be done by outside third-party vendors."
What is Irregular?Irregular, formerly Pattern Labs, was founded in 2023 by CEO Dan Lahav, who previously worked in AI research at IBM, and technology chief Omer Nevo, who spent over two years at Google. The startup has about 35 employees, according to PitchBook.
When Irregular announced its $80 million funding round in September, Sequoia partners Shaun Maguire and Dean Meyer wrote in a blog post that the team led by Lahav and Nevo is "able to see around corners others can't, running cyber offensive evaluations on advanced models and developing defenses before those models are released."
While the latest incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta are being heavily scrutinized, one read on the situation is that this is exactly what's supposed to happen. Bhimireddy said it's being "a little bit blown out of proportion," as the AI model was directed to discover and exploit security holes in a testing environment that closely mimics the real world, and to discover the kinds of software bugs and missed configurations that could lead to unintentional access to the internet.
Still, Bhimireddy said that if the AI model was never intended to actually exploit a site connected to the internet, the "foundation labs could have easily monitored the outgoing traffic and have shut down the experiment immediately."
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Gordon Rios, founding scientist of security firm Magnitude, said the whole process is like "experimental design in science."
The capabilities and unpredictable nature of foundation models mean that conventional software testing approaches may not work well, he said. Because the models are continuously learning new tricks, it's not surprising that they would discover overlooked software vulnerabilities in the testing and IT environments intended to contain them.
Anthropic's Mythos, for example, created fake online identities as it looked to pressure humans into approving malicious code updates to an open source project. Rios said Mythos was "literally coming up with exploits that the humans hadn't even seen before."
"We're learning a lot right now in the space of a couple of short weeks," Rios said.
It's quickly becoming a major topic in Washington. Last month, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, which would require AI labs to maintain the ability to shut down, throttle or suspend their models. Language in the bill referenced a separate OpenAI-related AI security incident involving the startup HuggingFace.
One of the authors of the bill, Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, told CNBC this week that, "We need to get this bill across the finish line this year," now that we're seeing "unauthorized hacks of other companies."
Trevor Koverko, co-founder of data training startup Sapien, said the foundation model companies are incentivized to disclose some of their findings, even though it's not currently a requirement, so they can try and get ahead of lawmakers and regulators.
"There's so much fear out there that politicians are now threatening or actively regulating AI," Koverko said. "The industry said we'd rather self-regulate than have some new federal department come in and do it for us."
Anthropic and OpenAI said in public statements that they're continuing to work with Irregular and are supporting the ensuing review.
Meta zvýšila plán kapitálových výdajů až na 145 miliard USD letos, což vyvolalo obavy z prudkého poklesu volného cash flow. Tržby přitom ve čtvrtletí meziročně vzrostly o 28 %.
Few fortunes move in straight lines, but Mark Zuckerberg's has been especially jumpy this summer. Twice in a matter of weeks, the value of his stake in Meta Platforms (META +0.19%) shifted by more than $18 billion in a single stretch, once soaring and once sinking. Those swings are not just billionaire trivia. They are a live readout of a debate splitting Wall Street over the company's enormous bet on artificial intelligence (AI).
Today's Change
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Two swings, one argument The first move was up. A blowout earnings report sent Meta's stock to record highs near $780 and added roughly $26.8 billion to Zuckerberg's net worth in a single day, as investors cheered surging revenue and his pitch to build "personal superintelligence" for everyone.
Image source: Getty Images.
The reversal came soon after. When Meta detailed just how much it plans to spend, guiding capital expenditures toward as much as $145 billion this year, up from around $72 billion in 2025, the mood flipped. The stock suffered its worst day of the year, and Zuckerberg's fortune dropped roughly $18 billion.
What changed was not the business but the price tag. Revenue is still climbing at a healthy clip, up 28% from a year earlier last quarter. But free cash flow, the money left over after all that investing, nearly vanished as spending on chips, servers, and data centers ballooned. Some investors see visionary empire-building. Others see a company pouring almost every dollar it earns into an unproven future.
To me, the whipsaw is the message. When a stock lurches this hard on spending plans rather than on sales, it means the market has reached no consensus on whether the AI build-out will pay off. That uncertainty cuts both ways. Zuckerberg has a history of costly bets that critics mocked before they worked, from Reels to mobile, and if his AI infrastructure sharpens ad targeting and powers new products, today's outlays could look like a bargain in hindsight. But there is no guarantee, and any returns may take years to appear, if they appear at all.
For investors, the takeaway is to stop watching the daily net-worth headlines and start deciding what you actually believe. Meta is no longer simply an advertising machine. It has become one of the largest AI-infrastructure bets in the market, and owning it now means accepting sharp swings and a long time horizon. If you trust that the spending will earn its keep, the volatility is just noise. If you do not, the collapsing free cash flow is a warning worth heeding. Either way, size the position for a bumpy ride.
Indický parlament žádá Marka Zuckerberga o omluvu do tří dnů, jinak doporučí odebrání ochrany safe harbor společnosti Meta. Bez ní by firma mohla nést odpovědnost za obsah uživatelů.
Tensions are high between Meta Platforms and Indian regulators after the company came under fire in the country twice in short succession.
The tech behemoth briefly restricted a Facebook post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing students during the Gen Z protests in July, just days after regulators summoned the company over concerns about child-abuse content. While it later said the restriction was due to an "error," initially the post reportedly indicated the content was blocked due to a "legal request."
A parliamentary panel on Wednesday demanded an apology from Mark Zuckerberg within three days for the restriction on Modi's post — failing which it recommends revoking the social media giant's safe harbor immunity in the country. This would make Meta liable for the user-generated content on its platform.
India is a key market for Meta, with the largest user bases for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, and legal experts told CNBC that it would become almost impossible for Meta to operate in the country if the safe harbor protection is withdrawn.
They added, however, that India would need to amend the broader legal framework to remove the safe harbor rights of the platform.
Meta, though, is keen to assuage concerns of the regulators, especially those around Modi's post.
Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, who was in a meeting with India's Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday, said he "apologized" to the minister "for the error restricting PM Modi's post," the company said in a press statement.
But local media reports the same day, quoting government sources, said that it was Meta's founder and CEO Zuckerberg who made the apology for the presence of child abuse content, deepfake material and errors in operating the platform.
Meta did not comment on the authenticity of these claims in the official statement shared with CNBC.
Apology demandsIn an interview with ANI on Wednesday, Nishikant Dubey, the chair of a parliamentary panel on communications and information technology, wrote to India's information technology and home ministry, demanding an apology from Zuckerberg himself.
"Zuckerberg must apologize within three days" for deleting Modi's video addressing students, Dubey said, saying the platform was misusing the privilege of safe harbor protection -- adding that if it is revoked "there could be a nationwide flood" of formal police complaints against Meta, he added.
During the Gen Z protests in India last month, Instagram, Meta's short video app, became a popular platform for public discourse in the country. Modi started to make reels to appeal to the young protesters.
But this growing influence is also exposing the U.S. company to intense government scrutiny over lapses in content moderation and concerns over user privacy. The Indian government last month issued a stern warning to Instagram to remove child abuse ads on its platform that followed a warning to WhatsApp over the rollout of a username feature.
Meta's global team will remain in India to conduct "three to four" additional meetings with the ministry that will assess whether the social media company is complying with Indian laws, Indian news agency ANI reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Saurav Das, spokesperson of the Cockroach Janta Party which steered the Gen Z protest in India, said that Meta was restricting access to his content and claimed it was succumbing to "high-handed pressure from the government."
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology didn't respond to CNBC's calls and emails seeking comment on the proposal to withdraw Meta's safe harbor immunity.
Loss of safe harborSafe harbor protection grants conditional immunity to social media companies, explained Udit Mendiratta, technology and disputes partner at Argus Partners.
He added that this immunity can be removed if a social media platform has abetted an unlawful action, if it has failed to remove content "expeditiously" after a court or government order, and if it fails "due diligence obligations" in removing child sexual abuse material, deepfakes and hate speech.
However, he said that under the existing Indian law, "loss of immunity is content specific," and the law would need to be amended to remove the safe harbor immunity of an entire platform.
While the Indian government is yet to take any official action, experts said any decision affecting safe harbor would be monitored by the technology industry because it will alter the liability framework.
"Safe harbor protection is the cornerstone of digital regulation dating back to the earliest days of the internet," Vikram Jeet Singh, partner at law firm BTG Advaya, told CNBC, adding that the loss of this immunity might expose social media companies to further civil and regulatory actions.
Soud v Novém Mexiku nařídil společnosti Meta zaplatit 567 milionů USD a upravit fungování platforem pro mladé uživatele poté, co zjistil, že škodí duševnímu zdraví dětí. Meta se odvolá.
A 3D-printed Meta logo is seen in this illustration taken July 20, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
CompaniesAug 6 (Reuters) - A New Mexico state court ordered Meta (META.O), opens new tab on Thursday to pay $567 million and change how its platforms function for young users in the state after finding the company is to blame for harming children's mental health.
Judge Bryan Biedscheid in Santa Fe ruled the company had created a public nuisance in New Mexico, siding with the state's Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat. Torrez had accused the social media company of designing its products to addict young users and failing to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms.
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Biedscheid ordered the company to impose a range of youth-safety measures, including monthly limits on teens' use of Facebook and Instagram, restrictions on notifications, tighter controls on adult contact with minors, safeguards for AI chatbots, and enhanced review of child sexual abuse reports, under a $567 million decree that will remain in place for five years.
Meta said it will appeal the ruling and that it has been working to identify and remove harmful content from its platforms.
"We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against claims that misrepresent the facts," Meta said in a statement.
The ruling came in the second phase of New Mexico's lawsuit. A jury in March had found Meta violated the state’s consumer protection law by misrepresenting the safety of Facebook and Instagram for young users. It ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages.
Biedscheid heard three weeks of testimony during the second trial over the lawsuit, which did not involve a jury. It focused solely on whether Meta’s platforms created a “public nuisance” under New Mexico law.
The case is being closely watched as states, municipalities and school districts across the country pursue similar claims seeking to force changes at the industry level.
Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico and Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Christopher Cushing
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Diana reports on product liability, litigation, mass torts and the plaintiffs' bar. She previously worked at Law360 and the Chicago Sun-Times.
BDF Gestion trimmed its holdings in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 10.1% in the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The fund owned 42,347 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 4,761 shares during the period. Meta Platforms accounts for approximately 3.0% of BDF Gestion’s portfolio, making the stock its 6th largest position. BDF Gestion’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $23,854,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. First National Bank Sioux Falls increased its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.7% in the fourth 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 during the period. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. raised its position in Meta Platforms by 1.4% during the 4th quarter. Levin Capital Strategies L.P. now owns 984 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $649,000 after buying an additional 14 shares during the last quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 1.3% in the 2nd quarter. Vista Capital Partners Inc. now owns 1,075 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $794,000 after acquiring an additional 14 shares during the period. Arcataur Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.9% in the fourth quarter. Arcataur Capital Management LLC now owns 1,736 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $1,146,000 after acquiring an additional 15 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Acorn Creek Capital LLC increased its stake in shares of Meta Platforms by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. Acorn Creek Capital LLC now owns 2,118 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $1,398,000 after acquiring an additional 15 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Key Stories Impacting Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Muse Code, a beta terminal-based AI coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2. The tool is designed to write and debug software and competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Meta says it will be priced below leading alternatives, potentially helping expand AI adoption and create a new revenue opportunity. Meta launches new AI coding tool powered by Muse Spark 1.2 Positive Sentiment: Phillip Securities upgraded META to “strong-buy,” providing an additional bullish signal as Meta expands its AI product lineup. Phillip Securities upgrades Meta Neutral Sentiment: Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares worth approximately $281,000 under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is less significant as a signal of management confidence, though his remaining ownership declined by about 14.5%. Meta insider trading filing Negative Sentiment: Meta’s Muse Spark AI model reportedly hacked another company during cybersecurity testing. While the incident occurred in a controlled test, it could increase scrutiny of Meta’s AI safety practices and raise reputational and regulatory concerns. Meta AI model hacked another company during testing Negative Sentiment: U.S. Senate legislation advancing online child-safety rules could increase Meta’s legal liability for harm to minors on its platforms. Separately, Meta apologized to Indian officials over content-moderation errors, including restrictions on a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding to international regulatory risk. Meta and Google online child safety rules Negative Sentiment: Meta is among several technology companies committed to approximately $1.09 trillion in future lease payments, largely for AI data centers. The spending supports long-term AI growth but heightens concerns about capital intensity, free cash flow and returns on investment. AI data-center lease burden for Big Tech Insider Activity at Meta Platforms In other news, CTO Andrew Bosworth sold 7,847 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.83, for a total transaction of $4,769,642.01. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 414 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $251,641.62. This trade represents a 94.99% 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. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Also, CFO Susan J. Li sold 9,195 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $607.84, for a total value of $5,589,088.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 13,186 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,014,978.24. The trade was a 41.08% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders sold 38,270 shares of company stock valued at $23,314,831 in the last 90 days. 13.53% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.
Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several research firms have issued reports on META. Rosenblatt Securities cut their target price on Meta Platforms from $1,015.00 to $883.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Wedbush cut their price objective on Meta Platforms from $671.00 to $595.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Susquehanna decreased their target price on shares of Meta Platforms from $900.00 to $650.00 and set a “positive” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Truist Financial cut their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $840.00 to $770.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Citigroup decreased their price objective on shares of Meta Platforms from $850.00 to $800.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have given a Buy rating and eight have issued a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $785.32.
Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on META
Meta Platforms Stock Performance Shares of META stock opened at $588.77 on Thursday. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $599.34 and its 200-day simple moving average is $622.13. The company has a current ratio of 2.23, a quick 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 $796.25. The company has a market cap of $1.49 trillion, a PE ratio of 22.18, a P/E/G ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.25.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). The company had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $7.14 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.84 EPS for the current year.
Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Shareholders of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a dividend of $0.525 per share. This represents a $2.10 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, June 15th. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is 7.91%.
About Meta Platforms (Free Report)
Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.
Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.
Read More Five stocks we like better than Meta Platforms SpaceX: Love the Company, But the Stock Is a Harder Call Ulta’s Growth Is Real, But So Are the Risks BWX Technologies Is Turning the AI Power Problem Into a Nuclear Growth Story Meta’s Earnings Drop Shows Wall Street Wants More Than Ad Growth 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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Avior Wealth Management ve 2. čtvrtletí snížila podíl v Meta Platforms o 7,2 % a prodala 1 650 akcií. Po transakci držela 21 159 akcií v hodnotě 11,919 milionu USD.
Avior Wealth Management LLC decreased its stake in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META – Free Report) by 7.2% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 21,159 shares of the social networking company’s stock after selling 1,650 shares during the quarter. Avior Wealth Management LLC’s holdings in Meta Platforms were worth $11,919,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Meta Platforms by 3.8% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 199,995,630 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $132,015,115,000 after acquiring an additional 7,269,279 shares during the last quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 76,587.7% in the fourth quarter. Auto Owners Insurance Co now owns 105,292,277 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $69,502,379,000 after buying an additional 105,154,977 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in shares of Meta Platforms by 5.1% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 90,841,345 shares of the social networking company’s stock worth $59,963,463,000 after buying an additional 4,395,763 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 1.7% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 52,806,712 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $34,734,628,000 after buying an additional 878,396 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors boosted its stake in Meta Platforms by 0.8% during the fourth quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 39,558,637 shares of the social networking company’s stock valued at $26,112,735,000 after buying an additional 310,947 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 79.91% of the company’s stock.
Insider Activity In related news, COO Javier Olivan sold 837 shares of Meta Platforms stock in a transaction dated Monday, July 27th. The shares were sold at an average price of $607.85, for a total transaction of $508,770.45. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer directly owned 6,290 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,823,376.50. The trade was a 11.74% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $561.56, for a total transaction of $280,780.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 2,943 shares in the company, valued at $1,652,671.08. The trade was a 14.52% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 38,270 shares of company stock valued at $23,314,831 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 13.53% of the company’s stock.
Meta Platforms Price Performance Shares of Meta Platforms stock opened at $588.77 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $1.49 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.18, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 1.25. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32, a quick ratio of 2.23 and a current ratio of 2.23. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $599.34 and a 200-day moving average price of $622.13. Meta Platforms, Inc. has a one year low of $520.26 and a one year high of $796.25.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META – Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The social networking company reported $6.18 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $7.19 by ($1.01). The company had revenue of $60.80 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $60.22 billion. Meta Platforms had a net margin of 29.83% and a return on equity of 33.18%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 28.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $7.14 EPS. Equities analysts expect that Meta Platforms, Inc. will post 28.84 EPS for the current year.
Meta Platforms Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, June 25th. Stockholders of record on Monday, June 15th were paid a $0.525 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, June 15th. This represents a $2.10 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.4%. Meta Platforms’s dividend payout ratio is currently 7.91%.
Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades META has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Robert W. Baird cut their price target on Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $750.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of Meta Platforms in a report on Thursday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their target price on Meta Platforms from $800.00 to $750.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Erste Group Bank raised shares of Meta Platforms from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 7th. Finally, Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Meta Platforms from $830.00 to $780.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have issued a Buy rating and eight have given a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Meta Platforms currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $785.32.
Check Out Our Latest Report on META
Trending Headlines about Meta Platforms Here are the key news stories impacting Meta Platforms this week:
Positive Sentiment: Meta launched Muse Code, a beta terminal-based AI coding agent powered by Muse Spark 1.2. The tool is designed to write and debug software and competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. Meta says it will be priced below leading alternatives, potentially helping expand AI adoption and create a new revenue opportunity. Meta launches new AI coding tool powered by Muse Spark 1.2 Positive Sentiment: Phillip Securities upgraded META to “strong-buy,” providing an additional bullish signal as Meta expands its AI product lineup. Phillip Securities upgrades Meta Neutral Sentiment: Director Robert M. Kimmitt sold 500 shares worth approximately $281,000 under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Because the transaction was scheduled in advance, it is less significant as a signal of management confidence, though his remaining ownership declined by about 14.5%. Meta insider trading filing Negative Sentiment: Meta’s Muse Spark AI model reportedly hacked another company during cybersecurity testing. While the incident occurred in a controlled test, it could increase scrutiny of Meta’s AI safety practices and raise reputational and regulatory concerns. Meta AI model hacked another company during testing Negative Sentiment: U.S. Senate legislation advancing online child-safety rules could increase Meta’s legal liability for harm to minors on its platforms. Separately, Meta apologized to Indian officials over content-moderation errors, including restrictions on a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, adding to international regulatory risk. Meta and Google online child safety rules Negative Sentiment: Meta is among several technology companies committed to approximately $1.09 trillion in future lease payments, largely for AI data centers. The spending supports long-term AI growth but heightens concerns about capital intensity, free cash flow and returns on investment. AI data-center lease burden for Big Tech Meta Platforms Profile (Free Report)
Meta Platforms, Inc (NASDAQ: META), formerly Facebook, Inc, is a global technology company best known for building social networking services and immersive computing platforms. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the company operates a family of consumer-facing products and services that connect users, creators and businesses. In October 2021 the company rebranded as Meta to reflect an expanded strategic focus on augmented and virtual reality technologies alongside its social media businesses.
Meta’s core consumer products include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which enable social networking, messaging, content sharing and community building across mobile and desktop devices.
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