Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees Thursday (July 2) that artificial intelligence (AI) agents have not progressed as quickly as he expected, a rare admission from the executive who bet his company’s structure, and as much as $145 billion in infrastructure spending this year, on the technology. The comments land at a moment when the payments and commerce industries are racing to build rails for agent-driven transactions, and they raise a question the whole digital economy is asking: How fast is agentic AI really moving?
Zuckerberg made the remarks at an internal town hall, according to a recording heard by Reuters. He acknowledged that a company reorganization that included major job cuts was not as “clean” as it could have been and that executives had miscalculated on the timing. Meta laid off about 10% of its global workforce in May and moved roughly 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams, Reuters reported. The restructuring was designed to fund heavy AI infrastructure investments and position the company to capture efficiency gains from AI-assisted work.
“The trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” Zuckerberg said, per the Reuters report, adding that the company’s bets on the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” He said executives had been “super optimistic” about tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code when planning began in January and February. He still expects Meta to see more significant benefits from its AI investments within the next three to six months.
At the same town hall, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth addressed a review of a data security incident tied to the company’s mouse-tracking software, which monitors employee activity for AI training. The review found no employee data was included in AI training, Reuters reported. Meta paused the program last month and may restore it on an opt-in basis, a reversal from April, when employees were told they could not opt out.
Zuckerberg’s caution contrasts with momentum elsewhere. PYMNTS reported that Visa, Mastercard and American Express are building agentic commerce into their core networks, that Goldman Sachs projects AI agents will drive a 24-fold increase in token consumption by 2030, and that Adyen’s agentic commerce lead rates the market at just 0.5 on a five-point scale, with the hard work sitting in payments plumbing rather than the AI itself.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, as he delivers a speech presenting the new line of smart glasses, during the Meta Connect event at the company's headquarters... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more
NEW YORK, July 2 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O), opens new tab Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an internal town hall on Thursday that AI agent development over the last four months had not "accelerated in the way we expected," according to a recording heard by Reuters.
Zuckerberg added that a company reorganization that included major job cuts was not as "clean" as it could have been and that the company's bets on the new structure "haven't come to fruition yet."
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Meta is projected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, a significant portion of Big Tech's more than $700 billion outlay on the technology.
Zuckerberg said he expects that the social media giant will begin to experience more significant benefits from its AI investments within the next three to six months.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on Thursday.
In the same town hall, Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, said a review of a recent data security incident with the company's controversial mouse-tracking software indicated that no employee data was included in AI training.
Last month, Meta paused the program, which tracks employee mouse movements and digital activity for AI training, while investigating the exposure of sensitive data.
If the company turns the program back on once the review is completed, it will be on an "opt-in" basis, he said.
When Meta first installed the program on U.S. employees' computers in April, Bosworth told them there was no way to opt out.
Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Courtney Rozen in Washington; Additional reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Courtney Rozen reports on the world's largest technology companies from Washington, D.C., focusing on the relationship between the tech industry and the U.S. government. She reported on DOGE and the federal workforce during the first year of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. Prior to joining Reuters, she was a White House correspondent at Bloomberg Government. She graduated from American University with a master's degree in journalism.
Meta Platforms (META) was a big mover last session on higher-than-average trading volume. The latest trend in earnings estimate revisions might not help the stock continue moving higher in the near term.
The most expensive infrastructure buildout in corporate history just found a possible second act. On Wednesday, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin reported that “Sources close to the situation do confirm that META is working on building a cloud infrastructure business to sell AI compute.” The stock responded, jumping 7.56% on July 1 as investors digested the idea that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) might soon compete with the three companies that have owned enterprise AI compute for a decade.
Why Meta suddenly wants to be a cloud vendor Start with the capex line. Meta guided full-year 2026 capital expenditures to $125 to $145 billion, raised from a prior range and blamed on “higher component pricing and additional data center costs.” Q1 capex alone was $18.997 billion, up nearly half year over year, all documented in Meta’s Q1 8-K filing. That is a lot of GPUs for a company whose revenue still overwhelmingly comes from selling ads against Reels and Stories.
Zuckerberg has been hinting at the release valve for a while. Per reporting around the plan, he has said “There are different companies that come to us from outside asking us… if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we bought it at.” And the strategic logic, in his own framing, is a hedge on overbuild. “If we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have,” he said. Selling excess capacity turns a potential capex disaster into a business line.
What Meta is walking into The incumbents are moving fast. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported AWS revenue of $37.587 billion in Q1 2026, growing 28% year over year, its fastest pace in 15 quarters, with landmark commitments from OpenAI, Anthropic, and, awkwardly, Meta itself. Andy Jassy told investors “Our chips business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate” on Graviton, Trainium, and Nitro.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is arguably in the strongest position. Fiscal Q3 saw Azure and other cloud services grow 40%, an AI business at a $37 billion run rate up 123% year over year, and a commercial remaining performance obligation of $627 billion. Those are contracted future dollars.
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Then there is Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), which grew Google Cloud revenue 63% to $20.028 billion with a backlog north of $460 billion, nearly doubling quarter on quarter. Google has also reportedly limited Meta’s access to its Gemini AI models due to computing constraints, a data point that makes the “build our own paid API service” ambition look necessary.
What Meta actually has to sell Meta owns custom MTIA silicon, one of the industry’s largest fleets of NVIDIA GPUs, and Louisiana’s Hyperion campus. It also owns Llama, the most-downloaded open-weight model family, and just launched its first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. A paid inference API where developers rent time on Meta’s chips against Meta’s models is a natural product. So is renting raw capacity to hyperscaler customers priced out elsewhere.
The optionality is real, but so is the credibility gap. Reality Labs still lost $4.03 billion in Q1 2026, and Meta shares are down 6% year to date and off 15% over the past year as investors price in the capex intensity. Enterprise cloud is a services business with SLAs, sales engineers, and procurement cycles Meta has never run.
The Q2 earnings call is the obvious venue for Zuckerberg to give this an actual name, pricing model, and go-to-market timeline. Until then, a cloud business exists mostly as a hedge against a capex number that keeps expanding each quarter.
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IREN stock is crashing this morning, and the sell-off is being attributed primarily to Meta Platforms' reported plans to launch a commercial cloud infrastructure business.
But a deeper dive reveals there’s actually more to the story that’s disappointing investors on Jul. 2 – adding to pressure on the name that’s now down an alarming 45% versus its high in late May.
IREN stock is tumbling at writing mostly because a regulatory filing late on Wednesday revealed a rather huge $800 million restricted stock unit (RSU) grant to its Co-CEOs – William and Daniel Roberts.
Investors are reeling from the size of the payout, especially since it represents roughly 17% of the firm’s estimated cumulated adjusted net income all the way from FY27 to FY30, according to short seller Jim Chanos.
For a company that has already heavily diluted its equity base recently (via a $3 billion convertible note offering and a $6 billion ATM program) to fund its data center footprint – handing out nearly a billion in stock grants to insiders feels like a slap in the face to retail and institutional shareholders.
Note that IREN is also facing technical selling pressure, having crashed through its major moving averages (MAs) recently.
The RSU grant to Co-CEOs is bearish for IREN shares, particularly because the company recently announced a $50 million a year jersey-patch sponsorship deal with the Golden State Warriors as well.
Investors have a bone to pick with that richest sponsorship deal in North American sports history because they want to see IREN deploying capital into data center build-outs, power procurement, and scaling its $3.4 billion Nvidia cloud contract.
To them, spending tens of millions of dollars on a massive consumer-facing sports brand feels like a costly distraction when the firm’s primary targets have traditionally been hyperscalers.
What’s also worth mentioning is that IREN’s relative strength index (RSI) is hovering around 31 currently, which means the stock hasn’t officially slipped into the “oversold” territory yet.
The aforementioned concerns are adding to pressure from META’s plans of beginning to rent out its excess AI infrastructure and GPU capacity to third-party enterprise customers.
Such a service, internally dubbed Meta Compute, stands to hurt IREN stock right where it hurts.
Investors are realizing that the “supply-constrained hyper-growth period” for GPU rentals is facing a massive new competitor with virtually infinite capital.
When a titan like Meta Platforms Inc decides to monetize its own infrastructure stack, it threatens to compress rental margins across the board.
That said, Wall Street remains bullish as ever on IREN, with a Moderate Buy rating tied to an $81 mean price target that signals potential upside of more than 100% from here.
Jefferies Senior Internet Analyst Brent Thill recently appeared on a CNBC Squawk Box segment to argue that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is making the right strategic move by entering the enterprise AI infrastructure market, even if it’s arriving years after established competitors. Meta’s planning to launch a cloud infrastructure business selling excess AI computing capacity, sending the stock up 7.56% on July 1, before falling 4.60% on July 2.
Jefferies Sees A $2 Trillion AI Compute Opportunity Thill’s bull case rests on backlog. He says Google, Amazon, and Microsoft collectively carry a $2 trillion backlog of compute demand, which he reads as a signal that any credible fourth entrant with capital can capture a profitable slice. Thill argues that everyone is “sold out for six months,” that you cannot get enough compute, and that prices have actually risen across the three incumbents. Even with Meta entering the market “late,” he doesn’t expect Meta will have to compete on price in the near term.
Meta has the balance sheet to fund the build. Q1 FY2026 revenue came in at $56.31 billion, beating the $55.56 billion consensus, with operating cash flow of $32.23 billion. Management raised full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to $125-$145 billion, citing “higher component pricing and additional data center costs.”
Thill argues that Meta is cheap and “the most hated large-cap internet name,” carrying “$35 of earnings power” that, in his view, does not require a rich multiple to justify. Meta currently trades at a forward P/E of 18, with a current share price of $585 vs analysts’ average price target of roughly $828.
Meta Is “Really Late” To AI Compute Thill says Meta is “really late,” that it will take a lot of money to keep up, and that Amazon controls close to 50% of the cloud market after decades of building. On execution, he expects Meta will need to win small and midsize enterprises first, then rebuild customer service and go-to-market motions. He draws a parallel to Google’s multi-year cloud ramp after hiring Thomas Kurian.
There is already competitive friction. According to a recent report, “Google also limited Meta’s access to its Gemini AI models due to computing constraints,” underscoring how tight capacity is even for hyperscalers themselves.
Execution Will Determine Whether Meta Wins Meta’s move into enterprise compute gives the company access to one of the fastest-growing markets in technology, but success is far from guaranteed. Thill believes supply constraints and strong demand create an attractive opportunity, even for a late entrant. The bigger question is whether Meta can build the enterprise relationships, sales organization, and cloud infrastructure needed to compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google over the long term.
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Key Takeaways Meta Platforms is adding WhatsApp usernames so users can connect without sharing phone numbers.The feature requires exact usernames, skips searchable directories and adds an optional username key.META expects Q2 2026 revenues of $58B-$61B and raised 2026 capex guidance to $125B-$145B. Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) is focusing on strengthening privacy across its platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. The latest announcement of introducing WhatsApp usernames strengthens META’s long-term strategy of making its messaging ecosystem more privacy-centric while lowering one of the biggest barriers to user adoption, sharing personal phone numbers. The feature allows users to connect through unique usernames instead of revealing their mobile numbers, making WhatsApp more suitable for communicating with new contacts, community groups, creators and businesses.
Meta Platforms has also designed the feature with privacy at its core by eliminating searchable directories, requiring users to know an exact username before initiating contact and offering an optional username key for additional access control. Once enabled, first-time contacts will no longer see a user’s phone number, reinforcing WhatsApp’s position as a secure messaging platform.
The move complements the company’s broader push toward private digital communication. In recent times, Meta Platforms introduced Incognito Chat with Meta AI, which uses Private Processing technology to ensure that even Meta cannot access users’ AI conversations. Together, these features address growing consumer concerns around privacy and data security at a time when AI-powered messaging services are becoming more mainstream.
A strong privacy protection is expected to enhance WhatsApp’s competitive positioning against the likes of Signal and Telegram. The feature should support higher user engagement and retention across META’s Family of Apps, currently used by more than 3.5 billion people. As WhatsApp becomes more private and easier to use without exposing personal information, adoption among consumers, creators and businesses could accelerate, creating additional opportunities to expand business messaging, AI assistants, commerce and subscription-based monetization over time.
Meanwhile, META’s improved recommendation system is driving up user engagement. AI usage is making the company a popular name among users as well as advertisers. It expects to advance the capabilities of underlying media generation models and ship new features to further enhance the product experience in 2026. META expects total revenues between $58 billion and $61 billion for the second quarter of 2026. The company now expects 2026 capital spending between $125 billion and $145 billion (previous guidance was $115-$135 billion), citing higher component pricing and incremental data center costs to support future capacity.
META Faces Tough Competition in the Ad SpaceMeta Platforms is facing stiff competition from the likes of Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) and Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) in the ad domain.
AI is driving Alphabet’s Search & Other revenues, which grew 19% year over year in the first quarter of 2026. Gemini Enterprise’s paid monthly active users grew 40% sequentially, while revenues from products built on Google’s generative AI models increased nearly 800% year over year. Alphabet’s total paid subscriptions reached 350 million, driven in part by Gemini app adoption and premium AI plans. The company has cited a more than 30% reduction in the cost of core AI responses since upgrading AI Overviews and AI Mode to Gemini 3, and a more than 35% reduction in search latency over the past five years. This mix of usage growth and efficiency supports continued investment while keeping Search economics intact.
Amazon’s advertising business continues rapid expansion as brands allocate more marketing budgets to its platform, leveraging its valuable consumer data and purchase intent signals. Advertising services revenues jumped 24% year over year to $17.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and advertising revenues grew to more than $70 billion in trailing-12-month revenues, reflecting successful AI-powered optimization of the platform and growing market share in digital advertising.
META’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & EstimatesMeta Platforms shares have dropped 7.2% year to date, underperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 18.2%.
META Stock’s Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Meta Platforms stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month price/sales of 5.57X compared with the Zacks Internet Software industry’s 3.66X. META has a Value Score of D.
META’s Valuation
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings is pegged at $33.01 per share, up by a penny over the past 30 days, suggesting 40.53% year-over-year growth.
Meta Platforms currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction | META Price Prediction) is the AI story hiding in plain sight. The stock trades at $612.91, down 6.99% year to date, while the underlying business just posted 33% revenue growth and a 41% operating margin.
Mark Zuckerberg told investors “we are on track to build a leading lab” after releasing Muse Spark from Meta Superintelligence Labs. Can this stock climb to $900 in 2027? I think it can, and here is exactly what needs to happen.
Why Meta Shares Are Stuck Despite Blowout Earnings The market is punishing Meta for spending. Full-year 2026 CapEx guidance was raised to $125 to $145 billion, and total expenses will land between $162 and $169 billion. Shares fell 8.55% the day after a Q1 earnings release that beat EPS estimates by 56.79%. Investors saw the compute bill and blinked.
The one-month move of +2.16% and one-year return of -14.51% tell the story of a stock trapped between AI hope and AI capex fatigue. A beta of 1.229 means every macro tremor gets amplified.
Wall Street Sees Big Upside. Our Model Sees More. The consensus target sits at $827.32, backed by 8 strong buys, 49 buys, and 7 holds, with zero sells. That is 89% bullish sentiment. Our base-case model lands at $819.83 for a 1-year target, implying 33.76% upside, with a bull case of $867.20 and a bear case of $714.22. Confidence: 90%.
Analyst estimates have been consistently too low. Q1 2026 EPS beat by 7.18%, Q4 2025 by 8.03%, and Q2 2025 by 21.84%. Quarterly earnings growth of 62.4% is not showing up in most models. Consensus is anchored to yesterday’s Meta.
The Path to $900 Per Share Reaching $900 from today’s price of $612.91 would require a gain of 46.8%. That is aggressive but not unhinged for a stock with a beta above 1.2 and this earnings profile.
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With forward EPS of $41.12, a price of $900 implies a forward P/E of 22x. Our base case of $819.83 already implies 18x, meaning the bold target requires roughly 3.7x of additional multiple expansion. That is achievable if EPS growth keeps outrunning consensus and the market re-rates Meta as an AI compute owner, not just a spender.
CFO Susan Li said “Q1 total revenue was $56.3 billion, up 33%” and that business AI conversations scaled from 1 million to 10 million weekly. Zuckerberg added, “we are on track to deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people.” The primary risk is that CapEx keeps climbing without matching revenue conversion.
Where Meta Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power At $612.91, Meta trades at a forward P/E of just 15x. For a business growing revenue in the low 30s and EPS in the 60s, that is cheap. The stock sits 4% below its 52-week high of $793.65 and well off the low of $519.78. Ten-year returns of 441.4% confirm the long-term compounding case. Any multiple recovery toward 22x on rising EPS gets you to $900.
The Bottom Line on $900 Meta needs to gain 46.8% to hit $900. I think it is a credible stretch for 2027.
Three things need to go right: Q2 revenue lands at the high end of the $58 to $61 billion guide, Reality Labs losses stop widening, and the Muse model family drives visible monetization gains. What derails it is a CapEx overrun without corresponding revenue leverage. We’ve outlined the blueprint for how Meta Platforms could reach $900 in 2027.
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Mark Zuckerberg just dodged a bullet. Zuckerberg, whom speculators give 32% odds of becoming the next trillionaire, came eerily close to steering Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) into one of the most legally and ethically fraught corners of consumer tech. According to NPR reporting from June 30, Zuckerberg personally floated an acquisition of prediction market platform Kalshi. Fortunately for him, the talks never advanced. The reason Meta walked away is the same reason investors should be relieved: the company judged the outstanding questions around Kalshi to be “too messy.”
Context matters. Meta just posted Q1 2026 revenue of $56.31 billion, up 33.1% year over year, with EPS of $10.44 versus a $6.66 estimate and Family of Apps daily active people reaching 3.56 billion, up 4% year-over-year. This is a $1.28 trillion company trading at roughly 20x trailing earnings. Bolting a regulated gambling venue onto that engine offered limited financial upside and enormous risk potential.
Why Kalshi Would Have Been a Disaster Prediction markets are riding a gambling wave. Amounts wagered on sports in the U.S. hit $165 billion in 2025, up from $6.6 billion in 2018. Kalshi’s platform spans 13 categories including elections, economics, sports, crypto, tech, and entertainment, a footprint that would thrust Meta squarely in front of the CFTC, state gaming regulators, and Congress.
Meta already faces EU and U.S. regulatory headwinds and youth-related litigation trials in 2026. The EU is escalating its probe into alleged addictive design elements impacting children, and Meta is negotiating with U.S. regulators for a voluntary review of its AI models. Bolting on a real-money betting venue to that pile would have placed another bullseye on Meta’s back.
Meta Pipeline While Kalshi was a distraction Meta avoided, the company’s actual pipeline is moving on several fronts.
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Mini-games social feed. Meta is rolling out a new app featuring a social feed of vibe-coded mini-games in select regions, per Insider, an early signal of where the company sees lightweight interactive content heading. Meta Compute. Bloomberg reports Meta is developing a cloud infrastructure business to monetize excess AI compute capacity, internally dubbed Meta Compute. The initiative encompasses three layers: AI model access hosted on Meta’s own infrastructure comparable to AWS Bedrock, raw compute capacity available to third parties, closer to CoreWeave’s model, and direct developer access to Meta’s data centers, chips, and models. Meta shares surged more than 7% on the news. AI spending per employee. Meta spent nearly $50,000 per employee annually on AI tokens, per the New York Times, a figure that highlights how deeply the company has embedded AI tooling into its workforce before selling any of that capacity externally. Wolfe Research estimates Meta’s potential AI cloud business could lift EPS by roughly 20% for every 1 gigawatt of compute monetized at a $25 billion revenue run rate. The firm projects Meta’s 2027 capital expenditures at $200 billion, well above the Street’s $160 billion estimate, while maintaining an Outperform rating and an $800 price target. A Kalshi acquisition could have dropped a regulatory grenade into the middle of all of it.
The Market Verdict Reddit reacted quickly. A thread titled “Suckerberg panic bought the entire AI chip supply and now he has no idea what to do with it” hit 11,356 upvotes on r/wallstreetbets. Meanwhile, a companion “$META accepted defeat” post on r/stocks drew 1,184 upvotes and 448 comments. Ironically, prediction markets themselves priced the news as a modest negative: Polymarket assigned a 0.99 probability that META closes down on July 2.
Zuckerberg’s stated priority is “personal superintelligence,” backed by capex guidance of $125 to $145 billion in 2026. Reports suggest Meta is now building a play-money prediction market app in-house, carrying a far lighter regulatory footprint. Analysts still carry a consensus target of $827.32, with 57 buy ratings and zero sells. Passing on Kalshi kept that thesis intact.
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Meta is getting into gaming with the launch of a new app called Pocket, which allows people to generate small, interactive apps and games using AI prompts. The software, a result of Meta’s acquisition of the team at the vibe-coded gaming platform Gizmo earlier this year, describes itself as “a creative platform for making and sharing gizmos,” which is what the interactive experiences are called. It also offers a scrollable feed where you can play with gizmos others have made.
Based on the app’s screenshots in Google Play, there are many similarities to Gizmo’s original app, which is still listed. Like Pocket, Gizmo also offers a way to use written AI prompts to build small, interactive experiences, and it includes a discovery feed.
Alessandro Paluzzi, a reverse engineer and regular spotter of new apps and features, first noticed the app’s launch this morning and published a Play Store screenshot of the app on X. According to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures, however, Pocket was first launched on June 29, 2026 on the App Store and Google Play. (Because of its newness, the firm can’t tell if it’s yet to see any downloads.)
Other outlets, including Business Insider and Investing.com, have also reported on Paluzzi’s discovery. Meta has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Pocket is another example of Meta’s push to make AI creation tools more mainstream, extending its earlier efforts, which included AI-generated images created via its Meta AI app, and AI videos created with its app called Vibes. It has also added AI features across its social platforms and into its video-editing app for creators, Edits.
Image Credits:Meta Given that Meta has not officially announced Pocket’s debut, it’s likely that Pocket is still in its initial experimentation phase.
Its counterpart Gizmo, however, had generated 635K lifetime installs across both iOS and Google Play, according to Appfigures, which noted it had a 98% positive sentiment.
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It would sell access to its AI computing power and proprietary models to external customers. The move is more than a product launch, in my opinion it is a fundamental reframing of what Meta is.
Why the Meta Stock Surge Makes Strategic SenseThe bear case was straightforward: Meta was spending like AWS, but monetizing like a social network. Indeed, today’s Bloomberg report directly addresses that concern. By selling compute to third parties, Meta converts its data centers into a recurring revenue stream. Moreover, this puts Meta in direct competition with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
This isn’t entirely a surprise because at Meta’s annual shareholder meeting in late May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that selling excess compute capacity was "definitely on the table". Today’s reporting suggests those plans have since taken concrete shape.
Why the Market is Reacting NowThe timing matters here. META had been under meaningful pressure heading into today’s session. On June 29, a federal judge denied Meta’s bid to dismiss a multi-state child addiction lawsuit, adding legal overhang to an already difficult June for the stock.
During the month-long selloff, more than seven of the largest companies lost over $2 trillion in market capitalization. META itself is down approximately 15% from its highs in the first half of 2026. As a result, today’s cloud announcement is changing the mood.
The Fundamentals Behind the MoveMeta’s underlying business remains strong. In Q1 2026, the company reported earnings per share of $10.44, well ahead of consensus estimates of approximately $8.20. Net income reached $22.8 billion, supported by fast advertising monetization driven by AI-enhanced targeting across Facebook, Instagram, and Reels.
It’s worth noting that Q1 net income was partially inflated by a one-time tax benefit of $8.03 billion. Stripping that out, diluted EPS would have been approximately $3.13 lower (a detail worth keeping in mind when modeling forward quarters).
More than 8 million advertisers now use at least one of Meta’s AI tools for content creation. A video-generation tool showed a 3% improvement in conversion rates in large-scale testing. Advertising revenue growth continues to be the engine and AI is making that engine more efficient.
Looking ahead, management forecasts second-quarter 2026 revenue of $58 billion to $61 billion, implying continued double-digit growth despite the high comparative base.
Is the Meta Stock Surge Justified?What today’s report signals is that Meta is attempting a strategic repositioning: from a consumer social media platform with AI infrastructure costs, to a diversified technology company with consumer, advertising, and enterprise cloud revenue streams.
Of 55 Wall Street analysts tracked across major platforms, 43 currently rate META a Strong Buy, with consensus price targets ranging from $825 to $880 ( a meaningful upside from current levels). A subset of more bullish estimates reaches $1,086.
The risk factors remain real: the child addiction lawsuit overhang, Google’s reported limits on Meta’s access to Gemini models, potential regulatory action on kids’ social media use, and the sheer execution risk of entering a cloud market dominated by entrenched hyperscalers.
But for a stock that, according to most discounted cash flow models, entered today’s trading session trading below its intrinsic value, the pivot to cloud computing opens a new chapter in the bullish scenario and the market is pricing it in.
Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
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Chief marketing officers are measured by results, not creativity or awards, and must do work that inspires the people in the company, says Meta's Alex Schultz.
At the time of this interview, Schultz was CMO and VP of analytics. A few days after the 2026 Cannes Lions concluded, Meta announced that Schultz would become the company's first chief data officer, passing the CMO title to Denise Moreno.
Schultz said there are three categories of brand AI use in the future — pure AI-only content, creators enabled by AI, and brands and creators who swear they will never use it. "The middle category will be the biggest," he said. "Pure human makes sense for some brands, but that middle bit of brands and humans enabled by AI will be the biggest."
Chief marketing officers are measured by results, not creativity or awards, and must do work that inspires the people in the company, says Meta's Alex Schultz.
At the time of this interview, Schultz was CMO and VP of analytics. A few days after the 2026 Cannes Lions concluded, Meta announced that Schultz would become the company's first chief data officer, passing the CMO title to Denise Moreno.
Schultz said there are three categories of brand AI use in the future — pure AI-only content, creators enabled by AI, and brands and creators who swear they will never use it. "The middle category will be the biggest," he said. "Pure human makes sense for some brands, but that middle bit of brands and humans enabled by AI will be the biggest."
Reports that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) would begin renting out excess compute not only moved its stock market price but also triggered a deluge of Wall Street analyst forecast updates by press time on July 2.
Specifically, in the first two days of the month alone, as many as ten institutional experts unveiled their META shares rating and target revisions, with 80% of the notes being bullish.
UBS’ Stephen Ju was responsible for the highest 12-month forecast on July 1 when he both issued a ‘Buy’ recommendation and estimated the blue-chip technology giant would rally to $865.
Citi (NYSE: C) analyst Ronald Josey was nearly as bullish one day later when his $850 price target was accompanied by a ‘Buy’ rating. Meanwhile, Mizuho Securities’ Lloyd Walmsley and Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) were tied for the spot of the third-most optimistic Wall Street experts, with their sights set on Meta stock hitting $835.
Elsewhere, though JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) analyst Doug Anmuth and Brian Pitz from BMO Securities refrained from issuing bearish notes, they were, nonetheless, outliers in ranking the equity as a ‘Hold.’ Additionally, the former refrained from setting a price target, and the latter forecasted a climb to $710 in the next 12 months.
The rush of rating revisions came together with a sudden July stock market rally for Meta shares that has left the equity 9.52% up in the weekly chart and at $595.11 even after the moderate correction early on the morning of July 2.
Meta stock price one-week chart. Source: Google By press time, the move appears primarily driven by reports indicating that Mark Zuckerberg’s company is preparing to rent out some of its excess artificial intelligence (AI) capacity.
While the alleged decision has been widely taken as a bullish sign for the firm and a similar move has already served to transform and increase the revenue of Elon Musk’s newer public company – SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) – it can simultaneously be seen as a warning about the AI move.
Indeed, multiple reports throughout 2026 indicated that data center construction hasn’t been going according to plan, with numerous delays and even outright cancellations meaning that, despite capacity being lower than could have been expected based on initial announcements, demand remains lower than supply.
Shares of Meta Platforms (META 4.34%) traded sharply lower Thursday morning, falling as much as 4%. As of 10:49 a.m. ET, the stock was still down 3.7%.
The catalyst that sent the social media titan lower was a Wall Street analyst's comments on the company's future.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Cloud spending spree This week has been a rollercoaster ride for Meta investors. Early yesterday, rumors emerged that the company is working on blueprints to develop a cloud infrastructure business, according to a Bloomberg report. The purpose of this venture will be to establish a platform to sell Meta's excess computing power and provide customers with greater access to its popular artificial intelligence (AI) models, according to the report.
This would not only put the company in direct competition with established cloud infrastructure providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud, but also pit it against emerging neocloud operators CoreWeave and Nebius Group.
Wall Street has had a day to digest the information, and while this will no doubt represent significant potential upside for Meta and its shareholders, every rose has its thorns.
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Analysts at Wolfe Research have crunched the numbers and concluded that Meta could potentially add 20% to its earnings per share (EPS) for every gigawatt (GW) of compute power it sells. That will come at a cost, however. The analysts suggest Meta's capital expenditures (capex) will increase to $200 billion in 2027, up from previous estimates of $160 billion, and will likely require a capital raise to support the higher spending.
You have to spend money to make money, as the old saying goes, and this case is no different. However, Meta is entering a market expected to exceed $500 billion for the first time this year, which represents a significant, ongoing new revenue opportunity for the company.
Moreover, at just 21 times earnings, Meta stock is selling at a significant discount to its big tech peers. That gives savvy investors the opportunity to pick up shares of this highly profitable company at a discount.
Danny Vena, CPA has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Mega-cap technology sector leaders are fundamentally altering the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure by transforming internal compute clusters into highly scalable revenue channels.
Meta Platforms Today
$585.93 -26.98 (-4.40%)
As of 12:48 PM Eastern
This is a fair market value price provided by Massive. Learn more.
52-Week Range$520.26▼
$796.25Dividend Yield0.36%
P/E Ratio21.32
Price Target$840.64
When Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META builds an internal compute cluster for research and development, the enterprise eventually hits a point where physical infrastructure outpaces immediate internal utilization.
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Wall Street traditionally hates this dynamic. Analysts view heavy capital expenditure (CapEx) cycles as a severe drag on free cash flow, compressing near-term margins and draining liquidity. Meta Platforms is currently projecting capital expenditures between $125 billion and $145 billion through 2026 to secure hardware.
Investors initially punished the stock for this heavy outlay, fearing an endless cash burn with no immediate return on invested capital. This tension creates a structural disconnect between visionary technology builds and quarterly market expectations.
Deploying the Megacluster: Turning CapEx Into CashThe narrative shifts violently when those sunk costs become a zero-marginal-cost product. Meta Platforms is pivoting to monetize its surplus graphical processing unit capacity by selling raw compute directly to third-party developers.
Markets actively validated this transition on July 1, sending shares up 8.81% to close at $612.91. By externalizing its surplus capacity, Meta Platforms is rewriting its return-on-invested-capital equation and repricing an operational liability into a highly scalable revenue stream.
Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) Price Chart for Thursday, July, 2, 2026
Investors can review SpaceX's NASDAQ: SPCX recent strategic pivots as the structural precedent. SpaceX leveraged its vast internal satellite routing infrastructure to externalize excess capacity for cash flow. When tech giants operate with zero reliance on cloud-leasing margins for their survival, they can price surplus bandwidth or compute at highly disruptive levels, establishing a formidable competitive advantage against standalone providers.
Margin Collapse: Pure-Play Lessors Face ExtinctionThis influx of subsidized bare-metal compute supply from a $1.55 trillion tech giant introduces a severe deflationary force to the broader infrastructure-as-a-service market. Bare-metal compute refers to leasing raw, unconfigured server hardware directly to developers, completely free from layers of proprietary enterprise software. It is a highly commoditized product, and pricing power dictates survival.
Because Meta Platforms has already financed its data centers for internal development, any external sales act as pure margin expansion. This dynamic establishes a deflationary pricing floor that heavily penalizes pure-play artificial intelligence infrastructure providers.
Mid-tier hardware lessors recently experienced severe multiple contractions, with CoreWeave NASDAQ: CRWV shares tumbling nearly 15% as investors discounted the viability of independent providers operating in the shadow of Big Tech.
Specialty hardware lessors require high leasing rates to finance ongoing data center build-outs and service heavy debt loads. They simply cannot sustain pricing power against a competitor possessing a 36.93% return on equity and a pristine 0.24 debt-to-equity ratio.
Meta Platforms uses its 32.84% net margins to provide the financial insulation needed to dump raw compute into the open market, forcing a necessary structural market correction among highly levered peripheral infrastructure plays.
Trench Warfare: Why Amazon and Microsoft SurviveWhile the injection of cheap compute decimates single-layer hardware providers, it exposes a critical bifurcation within the cloud sector. Legacy hyperscalers remain better insulated from this specific pricing war. Amazon.com Inc. NASDAQ: AMZN and Microsoft NASDAQ: MSFT offer compute through Amazon Web Services and Azure, respectively, but those platforms are far more than raw infrastructure. They bundle compute with sticky cybersecurity frameworks, platform-as-a-service tools and complex corporate integration software.
Large enterprises gladly pay a premium for compliance guarantees, data security, and seamless workflow integrations that bare-metal providers cannot offer. Meta Platforms lacks this deep business-to-business software stack.
Entering the raw compute market heavily pressures hardware leasers but currently leaves the high-margin enterprise moats of legacy hyperscalers completely intact. Investors must also monitor a potential regulatory friction point arising from the current administration's recent push for voluntary reviews of artificial intelligence models. This introduces a compliance bottleneck that could temporarily complicate the speed-to-market for hosted proprietary models, keeping Meta Platforms focused purely on raw open-source hosting in the near term.
Spoils of War: Cheaper Compute Boosts AI SoftwareThe most compelling aspect of this infrastructure reset is the downstream catalyst it provides to the broader technology sector. Cheaper raw compute dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for application-layer artificial intelligence development.
For software-as-a-service companies, server and compute costs represent a significant portion of their total cost of goods sold. When Meta Platforms weaponizes its excess capacity and drives down the market rate for compute, software developers experience immediate margin expansion.
Lower development costs accelerate product deployment, freeing up capital for user acquisition and feature engineering. This dynamic actively transfers enterprise value away from infrastructure middlemen and funnels it directly into high-margin software platforms.
The resulting commoditization acts as a powerful tailwind, aggressively supporting a bullish thesis for the wider software and end-user application ecosystem. Investors looking beyond the direct hardware impact should focus on agile software firms poised to capitalize on plummeting hosting fees.
Trading the Compute WarsThe strategic externalization of raw compute marks a critical evolution in how markets value technology infrastructure. With institutional sentiment holding a moderate buy consensus and an average price target of $840.64, attention now shifts directly to execution.
Overall MarketRank™100th Percentile
Analyst RatingModerate Buy
Upside/Downside37.2% Upside
Short Interest LevelHealthy
Dividend StrengthWeak
News Sentiment1.02 Insider TradingSelling Shares
Proj. Earnings Growth19.32%
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Options market makers are pricing in extreme implied volatility ahead of Meta Platforms' July 29 earnings call, with 1.14 million contracts traded around the catalyst. Heavy accumulation in August 2026 $720 calls indicates that the market is demanding forward revenue guidance and concrete timelines regarding the cloud monetization pivot.
The risk of a potential equity raise to comfortably finance the $145 billion capital expenditure cycle also remains a near-term liquidity concern. Investors assessing this structural shift may consider reweighting portfolios to capture the downstream benefits of deflationary infrastructure pricing.
Application-layer developers poised to capitalize on cheaper development costs present a compelling opportunity, while cautious participants might prefer to wait for Q2 projections before establishing new positions in the underlying infrastructure layer.
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The AI boom is creating opportunities across semiconductors, cloud computing, enterprise software, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and automation.
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Meta's new app "Pocket" lets people make interactive social posts. Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI Get ready for another Meta app.
Meta is rolling out Pocket, a new social AI app, Business Insider has learned. Meta describes the Pocket as a platform to "create, share, and discover gizmos with friends."
The app is listed on Meta's Help Center and in the Google Play Store. The timeline and rollout regions are unclear. It was not available to download in the US on Thursday. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
"The Pocket app is not yet available everywhere," Meta's Help Center says. "If it is available for you, some features may not yet be available in your area."
What's a "gizmo," you ask?
It's basically a mini-game you can create by typing out a prompt. In Meta's words, "a gizmo is an interactive, playable AI-generated experience."
For instance, you could prompt Pocket to create a gizmo that turns a flower into a paintbrush, letting you draw an image with that flower-brush on the touchscreen.
Interactive posts on Pocket are called "gizmos." Screenshot/Google Play Store/Meta Meta's family of apps has grown well beyond Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It has introduced new social apps like Threads and Forum, as well as several new AI apps that build on Meta's focus on artificial intelligence.
Business Insider exclusively reported in March that Meta had hired the team behind Atma Sciences Inc., which built an app called Gizmo. It also acquired a non-exclusive license to the startup's tech. Meta declined to disclose the financial details of the deal at the time.
A few months after scooping up the team, Meta appears to be cashing in on the gizmo experience with its new stand-alone app, Pocket.
Gizmo, by Atma Sciences Inc., had over 14,000 ratings on Apple's App Store with a 4.9 score. Sccreenshot/Apple App Store The app is listed on Google's Play Store and is pitched as a social feed where users can vibe code their own interactive games or content:
Scroll a feed of gizmos from people around the world. Gizmos respond to your touch and the tilt of your phone. They play sound effects and your favorite songs. They can use your camera or pull in photos from your camera roll. Some can even reason about the world around them.Alessandro Paluzzi, a developer who reverse-engineers Meta's apps to reveal internal tests, spotted that Pocket will be promoted within Meta's apps alongside a growing portfolio that includes Instants (Instagram's latest Snapchat-like app).
Pocket isn't the only app trying to build out a social feed around vibe-coded games. Sekai, an app with a similar premise, recently raised $20 million in Series A funding.
As some social feeds start to feel stale — and less social — interactive games could be a way to reignite engagement. TikTok has also experimented with its own feed of mini games.
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Sydney Bradley You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Sydney Bradley has been covering media and tech for Business Insider since 2020. She breaks news and writes extensively about Instagram and Facebook, as well as new platforms and startups shaping social media, dating apps, the creator economy, venture capital, and tech culture.Sydney's reporting on Instagram was nominated as a finalist for the 2021 Los Angeles Press Club National Entertainment Journalism Awards.She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in American Studies. You can follow Sydney's work on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram at @sydneykbradley.Have a tip? You can also contact her via encrypted messaging app Signal (@sydneykbradley.123), encrypted email ([email protected]), or standard email ([email protected]). Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.Selected stories:
Young founders are going viral modeDeath isn't the end: Meta patented an AI that lets you keep posting from beyond the graveDating apps are betting millions that AI will convince you to fall back in love with themHitting the social media jackpot is harder than ever — and it's changing the creator economyBig Tech's AI obsession is rattling creatorsNew startups race to bring back the 'old internet' vibes of the 2000sThe mysterious demise of a $1 billion social shopping appThe loneliness epidemic has given rise to a new crop of startups aiming to help people connect in real lifeIt's not just you — no one is posting on social media anymoreHow Instagram's unpredictable changes are giving influencers whiplashWhy YouTube subscriber counts have become an unreliable 'vanity metric' in the era of short videoInside the week that changed Facebook forever Meta AI Apps More Exclusive
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears poised to make a big bet on a potentially big market, but one that commands much slimmer margins than his company's dominant online ad business.
Cloud infrastructure has proven to be highly lucrative for hyperscaler peers Amazon, Microsoft and Google, and Zuckerberg has hinted of late that Meta could be headed in that direction. On Wednesday, CNBC's Jim Cramer confirmed that Meta will sell excess computing power to outside customers. The company is debating whether to offer access to AI models hosted on its infrastructure or to sell access to raw computing power, according to Bloomberg.
Wall Street welcomed the news. After slumping for the past year, Meta's stock started the third quarter with a bang, jumping 9% on Wednesday for its sharpest rally in more than five months. Investors have been looking for Meta to diversify its business and monetize its multi-hundred-billion-dollar investment in advanced data centers and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
"Making this as a revenue stream has been part of their road map," said Karan Ramchandani, managing director at advisory firm Post Oak Group. "It seems like a no-brainer to compete in the market, to sell compute power to other B2B players."
At Meta's annual shareholder meeting in May, Zuckerberg said a potential cloud computing business is "definitely on the table." And seven months earlier, on an earnings call, Zuckerberg said companies are regularly "asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."
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Just before Wednesday's rally, Meta's stock closed out its fourth straight quarterly drop, losing almost a quarter of its value over that stretch. In April, Meta boosted the high end of its 2026 capital expenditures guidance by $10 billion to $145 billion. Some of that is getting funded through debt, with the company raising $25 billion from a bond sale just as it was reporting first-quarter earnings.
"I think that this is a response to complaints that the company may be overspending and skepticism that Meta will ever earn a commensurate return on its capex," said Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, regarding Meta's push into cloud. "The problem with this company is that it only builds, or only thus far, capacity for itself, and it's not really monetizing any AI apps yet."
Almost all the financial benefits of Meta's AI spending to date have been recognized in the company's core advertising business, which has seen dramatically improved targeting capabilities and has offered a wider suite of creative tools to marketers. Meta still gets 98% of its revenue from digital ads.
Zuckerberg has been trying to change the narrative, with cloud being perhaps the most ambitious new effort. Meta shares jumped almost 4% in May, when the company announced various paid subscription plans for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp in addition to two subscription services for its Meta AI app and website.
Meta declined to comment for this story.
Not trying to be AWSCloud infrastructure is a particularly valuable commodity as the generative AI boom nears its fourth anniversary, and is something that very few companies can afford to provide at scale. The U.S. leaders are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which have all built large businesses by allowing companies to offload their computing requirements.
Mark Mahaney, an analyst at Evercore, said it's unlikely that Meta will try to challenge those hyperscalers. Rather, Mahaney sees Meta following in the footsteps of so-called neoclouds such as CoreWeave and Nebius, which offer access to AI-specific computing products like Nvidia chips and systems.
Shares of CoreWeave and Nebius both suffered double-digit drops on Wednesday following the Meta report.
Mahaney said Meta may have been motivated in part by Elon Musk's SpaceX. The company, which owns xAI, has recently signed deals to offer capacity to Google and Anthropic amounting to more than $2 billion in combined revenue a month as well as to startup Reflection AI.
Brian Schechter, a partner at Primary Venture Partners, also made the comparison to SpaceX. He said the companies are similar in that they've spent billions of dollars training big AI models on top of their own infrastructure.
Both companies "failed to bring to market an AI model that drove huge customer traction," Schechter said. "Being able to monetize their compute after a missed training run shows how compute can function more like a commodity."
One area of concern for some investors will be the potential hit to Meta's profitability. Selling cloud services typically requires building a big enterprise sales and support team, and the margins can't match what Meta generates from ads.
Meta's gross margin of 82% is among the highest in the tech industry, and the company recorded an operating margin of 41% in the latest quarter. Google provides a glimpse of what's to come.
Google's services business, which mostly comes from ads, notched an operating margin of 42% in the first quarter, while for cloud the margin was 18%. It took many years just to get there. The company launched its cloud infrastructure business in 2008 and made it generally available in 2011. In 2020, Google started disclosing financials, and didn't record a profit until the first quarter of 2023.
Meeks said that while Meta "probably has one of the most glorious business models in tech," anything it enters outside of online ads "would be dilutive to their business and would lower their margins from their glory days."
"As a Meta shareholder, I'd rather see them continue with open models and monetize AI through products and services with much higher margins than get into the brutal battle of building data centers in places like North Dakota," Meeks said.
WATCH: Meta building out cloud business is 'a really smart pivot,' says Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney.
While the Meta report sparked concerns about future competition, not all Wall Street analysts believe the sell-off is justified. Some argue that demand for AI computing remains strong and that CoreWeave’s competitive position has not materially changed.
Rosenblatt Sees Buying OpportunityRosenblatt analyst John McPeake defended CoreWeave after the Meta report. He said the firm’s checks show no change in demand for GPU computing capacity from large cloud companies, with shortages still common across the industry.
McPeake also said Meta likely does not have the right to resell any capacity it has leased from CoreWeave through 2032 to third parties. He said CoreWeave’s weakness creates a buying opportunity and reiterated a Buy rating with a $250 price forecast.
Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney told CNBC that Meta could generate $10 billion to $20 billion in incremental annual revenue by selling excess AI computing capacity.
If successful, Meta could leverage its scale to compete with specialized AI infrastructure providers while generating a lucrative new revenue stream from assets it has already built.
Weak Technical PictureCoreWeave shares traded at $85.45, well below all major moving averages. The stock is down 43.5% over the past 12 months and trades 17% below its 20-day simple moving average, 21.7% below its 50-day SMA, 13.7% below its 100-day SMA and 14.7% below its 200-day SMA.
The 20-day SMA remains below the 50-day SMA, a bearish signal that points to persistent selling pressure. Although the stock formed a golden cross in May, with the 50-day SMA moving above the 200-day SMA, shares have since fallen below both averages, limiting the bullish signal’s impact.
Momentum indicators also remain weak. The MACD is below its signal line and the histogram is negative, suggesting upside momentum has faded. On the upside, $88.50 is the first key resistance level. Support sits near $70.50, close to the lower end of the stock’s 52-week range.
CoreWeave Price ActionCRWV Stock Price Activity: CoreWeave shares were down 0.28% at $85.45 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Photo via Shutterstock
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“I find it difficult to believe that Meta was up only 49 points when it is getting into the most lucrative game, business-to-business at 18x EPS????” CNBC’s Jim Cramer wrote on X after reports emerged that Meta is exploring a cloud infrastructure business that would allow developers to access its AI models and compute capacity.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth believes the opportunity could be far larger than many investors realize.
From AI Spending to AI RevenueAccording to Bloomberg, Meta is considering charging developers to access AI models hosted on its infrastructure while also renting excess compute capacity to third parties, a strategy similar to AI cloud providers that lease GPU clusters to enterprise customers.
For Meta, the move could create an entirely new revenue stream beyond advertising.
JPMorgan estimates that every gigawatt of AI infrastructure made available to external customers could generate roughly $20 billion in annual revenue and add several dollars to earnings per share, providing meaningful returns on the company’s enormous AI infrastructure investments.
The analysts said monetizing infrastructure would also give Meta greater flexibility by allowing it to recoup part of the billions of dollars it continues to spend building AI data centers and compute capacity.
But Is Selling Compute the Best Use of Meta’s AI?While the revenue opportunity is compelling, JPMorgan isn’t convinced renting GPUs is Meta’s best long-term strategy.
Instead, the firm argues it would rather see Meta deploy that compute internally to power AI products across its ecosystem of roughly 4 billion users—including business agents, Meta AI, smart glasses and future AI services—where the long-term value creation could ultimately exceed infrastructure rental revenue.
That view aligns with comments CEO Mark Zuckerberg made during Meta’s annual shareholder meeting, where he acknowledged there is clear external demand for compute but said the company has prioritized reserving capacity for its own AI ambitions. Zuckerberg added that selling infrastructure could become an option if Meta eventually determines it has built more capacity than it needs.
A New Way to Value Meta?The debate extends beyond cloud computing.
For years, investors have viewed Meta primarily as an advertising company funding an expensive AI buildout. If the company begins generating meaningful recurring revenue from cloud infrastructure alongside its AI products, Wall Street may have to start valuing Meta as more than a social media platform.
Instead of simply asking whether Meta’s AI spending is too high, investors could soon be asking a different question: how much is the infrastructure itself worth?
Image via Shutterstock
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It’s official, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) is getting into the business of selling extra AI compute to others. The big news sent shares of the social-media and AI fast-mover up close to 9% in a single session of trade. While shares were incredibly cheap going into the session, the news shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, especially since Mark Zuckerberg floated the idea around previously.
Indeed, Meta Platforms has been spending serious cash on the AI buildout, with perhaps more of a “Mad Max” sense of urgency than some of the other hyperscalers.
After all, AI data centers in tents are a testament to the kind of demand that needs to come online to meet the demand for next-generation AI applications that could really kick off the monetization inflection point. In any case, add Meta to the list of hyperscalers. It’s a new entrant, but it’s one that might just have a bit more muscle as the great AI buildout continues.
Of course, it might seem tougher to play from behind as a hyperscaler. That said, in the AI era, I do think that starting fresh is a huge advantage. For Meta Platforms, it’s getting into the data center business at the right time. It doesn’t have to worry about legacy infrastructure and all the sort.
It’s built infrastructure to serve itself, and, all the while, it’s developed the expertise when it comes to procuring the components and getting everything up and running. With a ton of AI demand and investors looking for ROIs rather than just CapEx, Meta certainly stands out as a name that might be ready to move on as it transforms something expensive and uncertain into cold, hard cash.
Meta Platforms: The neocloud giant that could win big In my view, Meta is an agile, neocloud-esque kind of AI data center play, one with profoundly deep pockets that the smaller neoclouds can only dream about matching. And let’s not forget about the extreme levels of profitability. Perhaps there was a reason why shares of Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) imploded 17% in a single day.
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Demand for bare metal compute without the added complexity of existing platforms might actually grant Meta Platforms the upper hand as the hyperscaler race collides with an agentics-driven inference inflection point.
Add Meta’s very aggressive custom silicon roadmap (iterations every six months) and Mark Zuckerberg’s willingness to move fast (but hopefully not break things), and it feels like Meta Compute is the new, hyper-grower in the AI compute race.
The bottom line While the nearly 10% surge on Canada Day seems like a bit of an overreaction, I still think the stock is priced at a significant discount.
The name trades at 22.30 times trailing price-to-earnings (P/E), which I think makes little sense, especially when you consider that Meta Compute might have what it takes to outmuscle its hyperscaler peers. It has the agility of a neocloud with the economies of scale of a hyperscaler giant.
I think that’s a formula for success and perhaps new all-time highs sooner rather than later. If Zuckerberg and company get Meta Compute right, I think it won’t take long before Meta Platforms breaks past the $2 trillion market cap mark. Maybe, just maybe, Meta Platforms will lead the Magnificent Seven to higher highs again.
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The S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Index (XSO) softened on the day, slipping 15.70 points, or 0.46%, to 3,409.20.
The move extended recent weakness across the small-cap segment, with the index down 48.80 points, or 1.41%, over the past five trading days.
Junior resources and battery materials companies continue to generate strong news flow, led by drilling momentum at FireFly Metals, the start of mining at Lindian Resources’ Kangankunde project and further field activity at Krakatoa Resources’ Zopkhito antimony-gold project. You can read about the following and more throughout the day.
FireFly Metals strengthens Green Bay high-grade copper story FireFly Metals Ltd (ASX:FFM, TSX:FFM, OTC:FFMFF) has delivered further strong drilling results from the Green Bay Copper-Gold Project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, reinforcing the continuity of high-grade mineralisation within the project’s core zone.
The latest results form part of ongoing infill drilling aimed at upgrading the existing mineral resource as FireFly advances economic studies for an upscaled restart of mining at Green Bay.
Recent intersections from the high-grade convergent core zone include 42 metres at 6.1% copper equivalent and 51.5 metres at 4.9% copper equivalent, supporting the company’s view that the area could become an important component of future mining plans.
The core zone currently hosts a mineral resource of 8.8 million tonnes at 3.9% copper equivalent in the measured and indicated category and 10.9 million tonnes at 3.8% copper equivalent inferred, with the company seeing further growth potential.
FireFly also reported that its deepest hole drilled to date returned 49.1 metres at 6.1% copper equivalent, highlighting the depth potential of the system.
Lindian begins active mining at Kangankunde Lindian Resources Ltd (ASX:LIN, OTC:LINIF) has completed the first production blast at its Kangankunde Rare Earths Project in Malawi, marking the start of active mining operations and another key step in its transition from developer to rare earth producer.
The maiden production blast was drilled, charged and fired across 206 blast holes, fragmenting around 13,100 tonnes of material, including an estimated 5,500 tonnes of ore.
Mining is now underway using Lindian’s owner-operator Komatsu fleet, with ore haulage started and run-of-mine stockpiles being established ahead of process plant commissioning.
The company said building ROM stockpiles before commissioning was expected to support a smoother plant start-up and help de-risk the ramp-up to first production, which remains scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026.
The milestone was also backed by strong local support, with senior representatives from Malawi’s Ministries of Mining and Labour, along with the MMRA, MEPA and Balaka District Council, attending the first blast.
Krakatoa starts second field season at Zopkhito Krakatoa Resources Ltd (ASX:KTA) has started its second field season at the Zopkhito Antimony-Gold Project in Georgia, providing an update on drilling and development activity as it advances work across the historic mineralised system.
The Zopkhito project covers 1,779 hectares in the Racha region and is held under an existing mining licence valid until March 2042. Krakatoa holds an exclusive option to acquire up to an 80% interest in the project.
Zopkhito contains a foreign resource estimate of 225,000 tonnes at 11.6% antimony for 26,000 tonnes of contained antimony and 7.1 million tonnes at 3.7 g/t gold for 815,119 ounces of gold.
The project benefits from extensive historical work, including around 27 kilometres of underground exploration adits, more than 15,000 historical channel and geochemical samples, and previous LiDAR and IP geophysical surveys.
Critical Resources highlights battery cathode technology validation Critical Resources Ltd (ASX:CRR, FRA:9S70) has reported peer-reviewed research validating the dry supersonic deposition cathode technology over which it holds an exclusive option.
The research, published in the international journal Electrochimica Acta, provides independent scientific support for the solvent and binder-free manufacturing method that underpins the licensable intellectual property.
The technology is the subject of a provisional patent application and aligns with Critical Resources’ strategy to commercialise the process through licensing rather than by manufacturing battery cells directly.
The company said the validation was an important step in supporting the commercial potential of the technology, which is designed for lithium iron phosphate cathode production.
Nova Minerals strengthens board with finance and geoscience expertise Nova Minerals Corp (ASX:NVA, NYSE-A:NVA, FRA:QM30) has appointed Joshua Girnun to its board of directors, effective July 1, 2026.
Girnun brings institutional finance and risk underwriting experience from JP Morgan Chase & Co., where he co-founded a client-facing risk underwriting team covering metals and mining, energy, renewables, industrials, oil and gas, and agriculture.
He also brings technical expertise, holding two master’s degrees across resource finance and geosciences, along with an honours degree and a bachelor’s degree in geology.
Nova said the appointment adds financial, technical and sector-specific experience to the board as it continues to advance its resource projects.
Altech Batteries gains more time on CERENERGY funding conditions Altech Batteries Ltd (ASX:ATC, OTC:ALTHF, FRA:A3Y) has secured an extension to the deadline for fulfilling financial close conditions tied to its €46.7 million conditional funding approval for the CERENERGY® Sodium Chloride Solid State Battery Project in Saxony, Germany.
The deadline has been extended from June 30, 2026, to September 30, 2026.
The funding is being provided under Germany’s federal STARK program, supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in cooperation with the European Union.
The program is designed to help regions undergoing structural change transition toward ecologically, economically and socially sustainable futures.
For Altech, the extension provides additional time to progress the project financing requirements attached to the grant funding package.
Altech Batteries Ltd (ASX:ATC, OTC:ALTHF, FRA:A3Y) has received an extension to the financial close deadline attached to a conditional €46.7 million German Government grant for its CERENERGY® Sodium Chloride Solid State battery project in Saxony, Germany.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy had extended the deadline for achieving full project financial close from June 30, 2026, to September 30, 2026. The grant approval covers about 30% of eligible project capital expenditure, with funding of up to €46.7 million.
The funding approval was previously granted under Germany’s federal STARK economic development program, which is supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in cooperation with the European Union.
The program is designed to support regions undergoing structural change and help them transition toward an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable future.
The extension gives Altech additional time to complete financial close for the CERENERGY® project, which is being developed as a stationary energy storage solution for the European market.
Safe and sustainable battery technology CERENERGY® is a sodium-chloride solid-state battery technology being developed by Altech in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Society. The technology offers a safe, sustainable and strategically independent alternative to lithium-ion batteries, with potential application in long-duration stationary energy storage.
Altech said it remained focused on completing financial close and advancing CERENERGY® toward commercial deployment to support safe and sustainable energy storage solutions in Europe.
Funding in and mining rights preserved Recently, Altech strengthened its working capital position after completing the sale of its Meckering landholding in Western Australia for gross proceeds of $950,000.
The land, held through Altech Meckering Pty Ltd, had been classified as non-core by the board, with settlement of the transaction now finalised.
Importantly, Altech has retained rights to mining lease M70/1334, allowing the company to preserve exposure to the asset while releasing capital from land considered surplus to requirements.
As part of the sale, Altech has entered into an Exploration, Mining, Access, Compensation and Option to Purchase Agreement with the new landowner.
The agreement covers both the land and mining lease M70/1334 and is designed to ensure future mining access is maintained.
Under the agreed terms, any future mining of the lease can continue, while any future owner of the mining lease would also be able to operate a mining operation on the site.
About Altech Batteries Altech Batteries is a specialty battery technology company working with German battery institute Fraunhofer IKTS to commercialise CERENERGY® Sodium Chloride Solid State batteries.
The batteries are designed to be fire and explosion-proof, have a lifespan of more than 15 years and operate in extreme cold and desert climates. They use table salt and are lithium-free, cobalt-free, graphite-free and copper-free, reducing exposure to critical metal price and supply chain risks.
The joint venture plans to construct a 120MWh production facility on Altech’s land in Saxony, Germany, to produce CERENERGY® battery modules for grid storage markets.
FireFly Metals Ltd (ASX:FFM, TSX:FFM, OTC:FFMFF) has delivered another strong batch of drilling results from the Green Bay Copper-Gold Project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, with assays reinforcing the continuity and grade of the project’s high-grade core zone.
The latest results, including 42 metres at 6.1% copper equivalent (CuEq) and 51.5 metres at 4.9% CuEq, will be incorporated into an updated resource model underpinning economic studies for the potential upscaled restart of mining at Green Bay.
High-grade core strengthens early production case FireFly's infill drilling continued to demonstrate broad, high-grade copper-gold mineralisation across the convergent core zone, where upper volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) lenses meet the footwall stringer-style copper zone.
Key results from the core zone included 42.0 metres at 6.1% CuEq, including 9.8 metres at 16.5% CuEq, in hole MUG26-053, and 51.5 metres at 4.9% CuEq, including 17.0 metres at 9.1% CuEq, in hole MUG26-054.
Other notable core zone hits included 50.2 metres at 4.0% CuEq and 34.4 metres at 5.0% CuEq, supporting the company’s view that the zone could become an important part of future mine planning.
Isometric view of the Ming Mine 805L Exploration Drive showing the location of drill platforms and drilling reported in this announcement. Assay results greater than 0.5% Cu are shown in red.
Resource upgrade to feed economic studies The Green Bay resource currently stands at 50.4 million tonnes at 2.0% CuEq in the measured and indicated category, with a further 29.3 million tonnes at 2.5% CuEq inferred. The high-grade core zone contains 8.8 million tonnes at 3.9% CuEq measured and indicated, plus 10.9 million tonnes at 3.8% CuEq inferred.
FireFly's latest results will be included in a mid-year mineral resource estimate, which will support the preliminary economic assessment and scoping study now expected in July-August 2026.
Managing director Steve Parsons said the results showed “extremely high grades over substantial widths” and demonstrated strong continuity, providing a positive indicator for the upcoming economic studies.
“These are exceptional results with extremely high grades over substantial widths. They also demonstrate the strong continuity of this mineralisation. This is an outstanding combination of grade and width. The continuing of this mineralisation is a very positive indicator for the upcoming economic studies, which will assess the potential development scenarios for Green Bay.
“These results will be included in the economic studies, which are in the process of being completed, enabling us to demonstrate the financial benefits of such a rich core of mineralisation.
“With six rigs drilling underground, as well as regional exploration in progress, we intend to keep growing and upgrading the resource in parallel with economic and technical studies”.
Green Bay growth program continues Six underground rigs are operating at the Ming Mine, split between resource conversion and step-out drilling, while regional exploration is also advancing. Two surface rigs are testing geophysical anomalies at Green Bay and maiden drilling has started at the Tilt Cove project.
FireFly remains well funded, with about A$219.9 million in cash and liquid investments as of March 31, 2026.
What’s ahead FireFly's Near-term work will focus on:
upgrading inferred resources into the measured and indicated category; growing the resource through down-plunge drilling; completing the PEA/scoping study; advancing permitting and engineering, and pursuing new discoveries through underground and surface drilling
It's rare for a stock the size of Meta Platforms (META +8.88%) to jump 9% on non-earnings news, but that's exactly what happened on Wednesday, and for good reason.
Bloomberg reported that the social media giant is launching its own cloud computing business. Though Meta hasn't made its own announcement about a new cloud infrastructure service, the news comes weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that a cloud business was "definitely on the table."
The move added about $150 billion to Meta's market cap as investors are hopeful it could unlock a second profitable revenue stream for the company, complementing its advertising juggernaut, and leverage infrastructure it already owns. Cloud computing has become a huge cash cow for Meta's big tech peers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet, and all three are reporting accelerating growth in the cloud, showing demand for compute infrastructure skyrocketing in the AI era. Meta is also considered the fourth hyperscaler, though it's the only one without a cloud business. Zuckerberg has said that his company receives interest in cloud services every week, and that companies are willing to pay a premium, suggesting it should be able to hit the ground running when it launches.
The shockwaves from the news were felt throughout the tech sector as neocloud companies like CoreWeave and Nebius fell by double digits as Meta represents a huge new competitor, and chip stocks like Micron were down sharply as well, as investors interpreted the news as an increase in chip supply, which would hurt "bottleneck" plays like Micron, which have soared in recent months on the memory shortage. Additionally, it could signal a peak in the AI capex investment cycle.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
What's in Meta's new cloud service The service is still in development, but according to the report, Meta is planning on offering two primary services. The first is access to bare-metal computing capacity, essentially renting out its AI chips to companies willing to pay for them. This is CoreWeave's business model, and it's driven several quarters of triple-digit revenue growth, though CoreWeave has had to take on billions in debt to build out its data centers to meet demand, leading to losses.
Like Amazon's Bedrock, Meta is also expected to host AI models, including those from its new Muse Spark LLM, and charge developers to access them.
Meta's cash cow advertising business and the money it's already invested in AI infrastructure give it a competitive advantage against companies like CoreWeave, which don't have the cash cushion that Meta has, nor do they have another way to monetize cloud demand as Meta is doing with its AI models.
Getting into the cloud business looks like a smart business move. If Meta can turn an asset it owns from a high-risk investment to a profit center, why wouldn't it do so? It also shows Zuckerberg may be starting to act more rationally and follow the market, rather than his own product vision and desires, which have mostly led to flops.
Finally, there's a bonanza going on in AI cloud computing, which has driven bumper profits for the three leading hyperscalers. Google Cloud, the smallest of the three leaders, was losing money as recently as 2022, with a loss of $1.9 billion that year, but its profits have soared in the AI era as both demand and prices for cloud computing have gone up. By 2025, its operating income had jumped to $13.9 billion, more than doubling from the year before.
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Prior to the cloud computing report, Meta stock had slumped on worries that its AI investments weren't paying off, on reports of low morale following several rounds of layoffs, and concerns that it was overspending after lifting its capex forecast to $125 billion-$145 billion this year.
As a result, the stock now trades at a very attractive price-to-earnings ratio of 22, and that's after it reported 33% revenue growth in the first quarter, showing the core business is strong.
While the details on the cloud business aren't fully clear, if it executes effectively, a Meta Cloud could be where Google Cloud is today in five or ten years, as there's plenty of demand for it.
Trading at a discount to the S&P 500, the stock looks like a no-brainer buy on plans to launch a cloud business.
Nasdaq futures are down 0.15% while S&P 500 futures have gained 0.07%.
The quiet trading followed a strong Wednesday session where Meta shares closed nearly 9% higher.
The market movement follows reports that the Facebook parent is developing an internal initiative called “Meta Compute.” The program aims to generate revenue from excess AI computing capacity by renting raw compute to external businesses.
Similarly, rival neocloud platform Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) saw its stock plummet 17.01% as investors processed the competitive threat.
Meta’s AI Compute OpportunityMeta could generate $10 billion to $20 billion in incremental annual revenue by selling excess AI computing capacity, according to Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney.
Speaking with CNBC on Wednesday, Mahaney said the most bullish interpretation is that Meta already has excess compute capacity, reducing the need for further sharp increases in capital spending while creating a new high-margin revenue opportunity.
If successful, Meta could leverage its scale to compete with specialized AI infrastructure providers while generating a lucrative new revenue stream from assets it has already built.
Mahaney also said investors are underestimating Meta’s AI opportunity beyond advertising. He pointed to the company’s large base of small businesses using WhatsApp and Instagram, where AI-powered business tools could become another long-term growth driver.
Meta Technical Picture Remains MixedMeta continues to trade above its short-term trend indicators, suggesting near-term buying interest remains intact.
The stock is trading 6.3% above its 20-day simple moving average of $578.70 and 1.3% above its 50-day simple moving average of $606.95. However, it remains 0.6% below its 100-day simple moving average of $618.41 and 5% below its 200-day simple moving average of $647.42.
The longer-term setup remains cautious. The 20-day moving average is below the 50-day moving average, while the 50-day remains below the 200-day moving average. That “death cross,” which formed in December 2025, continues to signal a weak long-term trend despite recent stabilization.
Momentum indicators have improved. The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) remains above its signal line, with a positive histogram, suggesting bullish momentum is building after the previous decline.
Technical traders are watching resistance near $625, with the 100-day moving average just below that level. Support is seen around $595, close to the 50-day exponential moving average.
META Stock Price Activity: Meta Platforms shares were trading up 0.21% at $614.20 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Image via Shutterstock
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
U.S. social media giant Meta Platforms has defended the rollout of usernames on its messaging platform, after the Indian government on Wednesday said the move could lead to a rise in cybercrime.
"Users still require a phone number to use WhatsApp, and we've built multiple layers of defense against scams into usernames," a Meta spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
The tech company said it will limit the number of new people an account can contact, block repeated attempts to guess usernames, and enable systems to detect and remove activity demonstrating common patterns associated with impersonation or abuse.
It added that the username feature is not live and will be rolled out "slowly later this year." On Monday, WhatsApp introduced usernames, claiming it to be a "major privacy feature" designed to help people stay connected without giving away phone numbers.
According to a report by Indian news agency ANI, the Indian government said that the username feature "may materially increase the incidence of online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks, by enabling bad actors to solicit and message victims."
It has given WhatsApp three days to furnish a detailed explanation on the feature or face action under the country's information technology regulations. The company has been directed to pause the rollout of the feature until the government's concerns are addressed.
Safety over privacyWhile user privacy does play a role in policymaking, the "sharp rise in cyber-enabled financial crime has undoubtedly shifted the center of gravity towards security," Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.
Meta's own Adversarial Threat report in March found that online scam syndicates targeted users in India more frequently than any country other than the U.S. According to the Indian government, cybercrime incidents more than doubled in 2024 to nearly 2.3 million cases from 1 million cases in 2022.
India has more than half a billion WhatsApp users, and this scale makes it prone to government scrutiny, experts said.
WhatApp's reach, coupled with the username feature, means "misinformation could spread even faster," and scammers could use familiar names and photos to impersonate people, said Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research.
Some of these concerns are being addressed by Meta. The company told CNBC that it would reserve the highest-profile names, which can only be claimed by their legitimate owners, and withhold lookalike derivatives of known names to protect against impersonation.
Governments increasingly expect digital platforms to share responsibility for reducing harm, Bhattacharya said, but added that it is difficult "to draw the line between legitimate regulation and measures that could discourage innovation or weaken user privacy."
The government oversight of WhatsApp's username feature comes just weeks after India temporarily banned Telegram to prevent exam fraud during a crucial national test.
The government said that the platform hosted several channels that made false claims to have leaked test papers and then demanded money from candidates and their families for access. Telegram responded that the move punished "150 million ordinary users of the app" in India, and not those who leaked the exam material.
India has asked Meta to hold off launching its username feature on WhatsApp in the world's most populous country, citing concerns over fraud and impersonation, media reports said Thursday.
Shares of Meta Platforms (META +8.88%) spiked on Wednesday, following reports that the social media titan plans to sell its excess computing capacity to recoup some of its enormous artificial intelligence (AI) spending.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Monetizing its massive AI investments CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been ultra-aggressive in his efforts to build Meta into an AI powerhouse. From billion-dollar acquisitions to reportedly offering top AI researchers $100 million recruiting bonuses, Zuckerberg is sparing no expense.
In all, Meta plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026 alone.
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Now, Zuckerberg has a plan to recover some of that cash sooner than investors expected.
The cloud computing colossus is considering launching a new business centered on selling its excess AI computing resources, as well as access to its AI models, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Meta would continue to operate its sprawling data centers and rent access to developers.
Competition would be fierce The move could place Meta in more direct competition with AI infrastructure providers such as Nebius and CoreWeave, along with hyperscalers like Microsoft and Alphabet's Google Cloud.
Those aren't easy rivals to challenge, but Meta may be one of the few companies that could compete successfully in this rapidly expanding AI compute arena.
Joe Tenebruso has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Wall Street loves some stocks and despises others. There can be a lot of reasons for a stock to fall out of favor, with some of them being legitimate and others being a bit less concrete. It's the battered stocks in the latter category that I'm looking for, as they often have the potential to turn into massive long-term winners.
One stock that I've got my eye on that has been battered over the past year is Meta Platforms (META +8.88%). It's down by more than 25% from its all-time high, but I think Wall Street has its analysis of Meta all wrong, which is why now may be the perfect buying opportunity.
Image source: Getty Images.
The market views Meta as an AI company. It isn't. The market typically lumps Meta in with the other three AI hyperscalers: Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. They are the four biggest spenders in the AI sector, and are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars annually into building data centers. What sets Meta apart from the other three is that it is using all of the computing power it's building for internal purposes. The others have thriving cloud computing business units that help them generate profits to offset their costs and make their investments viable in the long term.
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Meta is only using its AI data centers to train and power its AI systems, and so far, the results from those efforts have been relatively lackluster. When you hear about a cutting-edge AI model that's wowing the world with its capabilities, the one being discussed is rarely Meta's Llama. That's a problem, as it indicates that Meta is likely behind the pack on large language model development. However, some of the expected use cases for its AI model haven't arrived yet. Meta is going all in on a different form factor for its AI interface: smart glasses. It envisions a future where AI will be connected to cameras that allow it to perceive the world around the user, analyze what it sees, and deliver contextualized AI for the user. Meta's current AI glasses are only a fraction of what it hopes to produce in the future.
In the meantime, it's just an advertising company. Meta derives most of its revenue from selling ads on its social media platforms, which it has improved using its AI models. This is leading to strong growth in its own right; revenue rose 33% year over year in the first quarter. I think most investors should think of Meta as a social media business. Viewed through that lens, Meta looks like a pretty cheap stock right now.
META PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts.
Meta trades at a dirt-cheap 17 times forward earnings, which is among the cheapest levels it has traded at over the past few years. That's a low price to pay, especially considering the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.22%) trades for around 21 times forward earnings. The contrast between Meta's rapid growth and its low price shows why Wall Street is wrong on this one. Long-term investors would be smart to load up on shares now.
Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Meta Platforms (META +8.88%), a social networking and digital advertising platforms provider, closed at $612.91. Shares rose 8.81% as premarket cloud-business reports eased investor concerns about AI spending. Investors are watching whether the new cloud effort can support future margins and AI demand.
The company’s trading volume reached 45.1M shares, which is in about 159% above its three-month average of 17.4M shares.
How the markets moved todayThe S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.22%) closed at 7,483.23, down 0.22%, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.66%) finished at 26,040, down 0.66%. Among digital advertising and social networking platforms peers, Alphabet (GOOGL +1.11%) closed at $357.89, up 1.29%, and Snap (SNAP +6.98%) closed at $4.75, up 6.98 %.
What this means for investorsMeta Platforms’ rally followed reports that the company is developing a cloud business to generate revenue from excess AI computing capacity, giving investors a new way to think about its heavy AI infrastructure spending. The reported initiative may involve offering access to AI models hosted on Meta’s proprietary systems, which could reframe the company’s data-center expansion as a potential revenue source rather than solely a cost burden.
This distinction is important as Meta has increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $125 billion to $145 billion, making AI returns a key factor in its valuation. Since the cloud initiative is still in development, investors will need further evidence before considering it a significant business line. Meta’s next earnings report should provide more insight into revenue growth, margins, capital expenditures, and whether AI infrastructure spending is delivering sustainable financial returns.
Eric Trie has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV 13.87%), a specialized AI cloud infrastructure provider, closed at $85.69, down 13.92%. Shares fell after a Bloomberg report said Meta Platforms plans to expand into cloud infrastructure, raising competition concerns for AI infrastructure providers. Investors are now watching whether CoreWeave’s backlog and customer relationships will absorb the pressure.
How the markets moved todayS&P 500 (^GSPC 0.22%) fell 0.22% to 7,483.23, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 0.66%) dropped 0.66% to 26,040. Within AI cloud infrastructure and specialized GPU compute services, Nebius Group (NBIS 16.79%) slid 17.01% to $229.18 and Super Micro Computer (SMCI 5.73%) declined 5.73% to $27.65 as traders reassessed competition in the AI infrastructure trade.
What this means for investorsCoreWeave shares fell after reports that Meta Platforms could start a cloud business to sell extra AI computing power, which would mean more competition for companies like CoreWeave. The report was especially relevant for CoreWeave because Meta is already a major customer. Now, investors are less worried about general cloud competition and more interested in whether large AI buyers will eventually manage or profit from their own computing resources.
This news comes at a time when Neocloud stocks are under pressure, AI infrastructure spending is high, and questions remain about CoreWeave’s ability to convert its backlog into actual capacity. CoreWeave’s $99.4 billion backlog and more than 3.5 gigawatts of contracted power show strong demand, but investors are still watching capital spending, financing costs, customer concentration, and whether large AI customers continue relying on specialized providers as their own infrastructure expands.
Eric Trie has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Key Takeaways Meta shares rallied Wednesday following a report that the company is considering launching a business to sell excess compute capacity.The move could put Meta in competition with cloud services from Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. Get personalized, AI-powered answers built on 27+ years of trusted expertise.
Meta's stock is soaring on signs it could be on the verge of launching a new business.
Meta Platforms (META) shares were up 10% recently, making it one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 Wednesday, following a report that it aims to launch a cloud computing business. Meta has created an internal initiative called "Meta Compute" to manage the massive amounts of compute the company is acquiring, and is considering selling excess capacity, according to a Bloomberg report.1
The social media giant is also considering building a business selling access to AI models from several companies hosted through its existing AI infrastructure, akin to Amazon Web Services' offerings through the Bedrock platform, Bloomberg reported. Meta declined to comment on the report.
Such an operation could bring the Facebook and Instagram parent in competition with cloud services from Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google Cloud, Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure, and Amazon's (AMZN) AWS.
Why This Matters to Investors The move could also help Meta soothe concerns about its massive spending plans to build out its AI infrastructure.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Meta's annual investor day back in May that "almost every week" Meta's partners ask them about a business to sell compute or model access. At the time, he said Meta had not yet pursued selling its compute because the company expected to have a use for all of it, but said it could be an option if Meta gets to "a point where we feel that we have overbuilt," per an AlphaSense transcript.
Shares of so-called "neocloud" companies CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius Group (NBIS) tumbled to lead decliners in the Nasdaq 100 following the news, dropping about 11% and 14%, respectively.
Even with Wednesday's rally, Meta shares are down about 6% year-to-date, after a slump amid concerns about its AI progress and the scale of its investments.
Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) shares rose nearly 10% to $619.44 after a report that the company is building a cloud business to sell its excess AI computing capacity.
Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter, said the move could reduce Meta's reliance on advertising and set it against the three firms that dominate cloud infrastructure. For a company that still draws almost all its revenue from ads, that would mark a significant widening of the base.
What Meta is weighing
One option under review is letting customers tap AI models hosted on Meta's own infrastructure. That would resemble Amazon Web Services' Bedrock platform, which sells access to a menu of models on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The idea is not new inside the company. Zuckerberg flagged it at Meta's annual shareholder meeting in May, saying it was "definitely on the table." He said other companies approach Meta almost every week asking to buy access to its models or spare capacity at a premium.
Selling that access would become a live option, he added, if Meta reached a point where it had overbuilt its data-centre capacity.
A hedge against overbuilding
That framing matters. It positions a cloud business less as a bold pivot than as a use for capacity Meta may otherwise leave idle. The company is pouring money into data centres, and a resale market would let it recoup some of that outlay rather than strand it.
The spending numbers behind the strategy are large. Big Tech firms are expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year, up from around $400 billion in 2025. At that scale, even a modest overbuild leaves a lot of expensive silicon looking for work.
Taking on the incumbents
The move would push Meta into a contest with Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, the three companies that have spent a decade building the cloud market. None will cede ground easily, and Meta would arrive as a challenger rather than an equal.
The prize is a revenue stream that does not rise and fall with the advertising cycle. That is the real draw. Meta's ad business is vast but exposed to economic swings and platform shifts, and a cloud arm would give it something steadier to lean on.
Meta shares jumped nearly 10% Wednesday following a report the company is planning to sell excess computing power, allowing it to recover some of the billions of dollars it has sunk into AI.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based tech giant, which has rushed to secure pricey data centers and chips, is building a new cloud business to sell access to its AI models and compute, according to Bloomberg.
It’s welcome news for investors, who have grown anxious over whether Meta will be able to deliver returns on the hundreds of billions of dollars it has spent to build up a trove of coveted computing power, with a goal of developing “superintelligence.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has insisted that it’s crucial for Meta to build up as much computing capacity as possible. AP Photo/Alex Brandon Meta declined to comment.
The new cloud business would allow Meta to generate revenue on any leftover capacity, while setting it up to compete with industry leaders like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, CoreWeave and SpaceX.
Meta is debating whether the cloud business should be structured to sell access to its own AI models, or to raw computing power itself, according to the report, which noted that plans could change.
If it decides to sell access to AI models on its own infrastructure, it would be taking a similar approach to Amazon – running the data centers and chips that power the bots and then charging customers fees to access them.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX – which took over his artificial intelligence firm xAI in February – has adopted a similar approach, striking lucrative rental deals with Anthropic and Google for access to its huge Memphis data center.
Anthropic agreed to pay $1.25 billion a month, while Google signed off on a $920 million monthly fee.
Meta could alternatively choose to sell access to its computing capacity, similar to CoreWeave’s business model.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based tech giant is reportedly building a new cloud business to sell access to its AI compute. Anadolu via Getty Images OpenAI kicked off the race to amass large amounts of computing capacity in 2022 with the launch of its ChatGPT bot, as developers recognized that there was a limited amount of power despite skyrocketing demand.
In April, shares in Meta slid after the company raised its spending forecast to $145 billion amid mounting fears that AI stocks are overvalued, similar to the “dot-com bubble” of the early 2000s.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted that it’s crucial for the company to build up as much computing capacity as possible and consider its use later, since supply is limited – but in May, he signaled an openness to selling excess power.
“It’s definitely on the table,” Zuckerberg said at the annual shareholder meeting. “Almost every week there are different companies that come to us from the outside asking us to both stand up an API service or asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we’ve bought it at.”
The new cloud business would allow Meta to generate revenue on any leftover capacity. Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images “We haven’t done that yet because we think we have a use for the compute,” he added. “But obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out.”
Last summer, Meta paid a whopping $15 billion to hire AI brainiac Alexandr Wang and take a 49% stake in his startup, Scale AI.
The company released its first AI model under Wang’s lead in April – though the model, called “Muse Spark,” did not live up to hopes for a state-of-the-art bot.
Wang has defended the model, saying it should serve as an “appetizer” while Meta is “cooking” up the main course.
WhatsApp recently began offering usernames, designed to help people connect while keeping their phone numbers private.
Now, the Meta-owned company said it will allow high-profile names to be claimed only by legitimate owners as it tries to prevent impersonation on the messaging platform, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (July 1).
The username feature was introduced Monday (June 29), when Meta began letting customers reserve a unique handle for launch later in the year.
“Usernames are our latest step to make WhatsApp even more private. There’s no directory to browse and no suggestions—people will need to know your exact username to contact you for the first time,” the company wrote in its announcement.
According to the Bloomberg report, the move is facing scrutiny from India’s government, which is expected to call on WhatApp to explain the implications of the feature. Meta told Bloomberg it has built several layers of protection against scams into WhatsApp’s usernames offering.
“Other users need to know the exact username to message you, we will limit how many new people an account can contact, block repeated attempts to guess someone’s username key, and have systems to detect and remove activity showing common impersonation and abuse patterns,” the company said.
Bloomberg noted that India represents the largest market for WhatsApp with upwards of 600 million users, meaning any serious government pushback can hinder the global rollout of the username feature.
This is happening at a time when scammers are increasingly using social media channels to target their victims. Findings by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released in April showed that nearly 30% of people who reported losing money in a scam last year say that the scam began on social media.
“Scammers may hack a user’s account, exploit what a user posts to figure out how to target them, or buy ads and use the same tools used by real businesses to target people by age, interests or shopping habits,” the commission said.
The FTC’s data are in line with PYMNTS Intelligence research which showed that digital communication channels are among the most common ways cybercriminals make their first contact with financial scams victims.
Meta introduced a series of artificial intelligence-powered anti-scam tools for WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger earlier this year.
In the case of WhatApp, that meant a warning system that alerts users of potentially suspicious device-linking requests, aimed at preventing scams where fraudsters try to dupe WhatsApp users into connecting their account to another device.
Shares of Meta Platforms jumped more than 6% on Wall Street on Wednesday after a report said the social media giant is preparing to launch a cloud computing business that would sell AI computing power to outside customers.
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Meta shares popped on reports of a new cloud-computing venture, but some analysts wonder if that would signal disappointing uptake of internal AI offerings.
Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow breaks down Meta's plans to develop its own cloud infrastructure business aimed at selling access to AI computing power and models. Plus, the Trump administration lifts foreign access restrictions on Anthropic's Fable 5 AI model.
Investors are bailing on CoreWeave CRWV shares on July 1 following news that Meta Platforms (META) is building an internal cloud infrastructure business dubbed “Meta Compute”.
The sell-off stems mostly from fears that a resourceful name like Meta may soon become a CRWV rival, but a deeper dive suggests it overlooks several operational and market realities.
There’s a strong case to be made that CoreWeave stock is overreacting to the Meta Compute news, and the pullback is actually an opportunity for long-term investors to load up on a quality name at a discount.
For starters, Meta is reportedly only looking at external sales as a safety valve if it overbuilds. The firm’s core business remains driving engagement, ad revenue, and its own consumer AI tools (like Muse Spark).
Meta Platforms will always prioritize its own sprawling training workloads; the moment a massive new internal model needs training, it will reclaim its compute.
And serious enterprise clients and AI firms can’t build stable, long-term products on spare capacity that could be throttled or pulled back whenever Meta’s internal needs spike.
CoreWeave Inc – by contrast – offers dedicated, SLA-backed, contractually guaranteed sovereign infrastructure.
In short, META’s intent is monetizing excess capacity, not becoming a pure-play neocloud, which makes CRWV shares’ dip worth buying on Wednesday.
CoreWeave shares are being sold off today as if Meta is about to pull its business from the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure firm.
But in reality, the $21 billion deal it signed in April runs through 2032. These hyperscale data center contracts are notorious for their ironclad, take-or-pay structures.
Even if META builds its own cloud commercialization business, they are “legally” and financially obligated to fulfill its multi-billion-dollar commitments to CRWV.
Simply put, the Nasdaq-listed firm’s near-to-mid-term revenue visibility from Meta remains rather intact.
Wall Street remains bullish on CoreWeave IncInvestors should also note that renting out raw GPUs requires an entirely different software stack, enterprise sales force, and compliance infrastructure than running a consumer social network.
Fortune 500 companies are incredibly sensitive about data privacy. So they may not be comfortable hosting proprietary data or training confidential models on the infrastructure of an ad-tech titan like Meta.
In contrast, CoreWeave has spent years perfecting its “proprietary” orchestration software, custom networking topologies, and bare-metal performance optimized strictly for artificial intelligence.
Meta Platforms has a world-class infrastructure team, but turning an internal network into a secure, multi-tenant enterprise public cloud takes years of friction. This further suggests CRWV stock is attractive to load up on the pullback today.
Note that Wall Street analysts also have a consensus “Overweight” rating on CoreWeave Inc at the time of writing.
Meta is planning a cloud infrastructure business that will sell AI computing power/model access.
That’s according to a report Wednesday (July 1) by Bloomberg News, which says this move would put Meta in greater competition with cloud leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Already scrambling to secure the infrastructure for its own artificial intelligence (AI) projects, Meta is now forming a business to derive revenue from surplus computing power sold to outside customers, sources familiar with matter told Bloomberg.
PYMNTS has contacted Meta for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
According to the Bloomberg report, the sources say one possible plan would involve offering access to various AI models hosted on Meta’s existing AI infrastructure, similar to what AWS does with its Bedrock. Meta would run the data centers and chips powering the models, charging developers to access them.
In addition, Meta is also weighing a plan to sell access to “raw” computing capacity, similar to what “neocloud businesses” like CoreWeave offer, the sources said. The project falls under the umbrella of Meta Compute, an in-house initiative to develop and oversee the company’s AI infrastructure efforts, one of the sources said.
In other artificial intelligence news, PYMNTS wrote last about the price adjustments Meta and other tech giants are making amid slowing consumer and enterprise usage.
“The consumer price cuts sit alongside a structural problem. Anthropic’s $200 Claude Code plan gives developers 20 times the usage of its base tier,” that report said.
“Power users on that plan can consume the equivalent of $600 to $1,500 worth of API-priced compute for a flat monthly fee …” PYMNTS added. “AI companies are cutting prices at the consumer level while absorbing the cost of heavy usage at the same time.”
Meta’s decision to start offering paid subscriptions “sharpens the competitive picture,” that report added. The Facebook owner has spent decades expanding on an ad-supported, free-access model. Testing a paid AI tier indicates that even it sees limits to what advertising can fund on its own. As covered here, Meta is also considering a $199.99 premium tier for its Hatch AI agent, which would place it directly alongside Anthropic and OpenAI at the peak of the market.
Research from PYMNTS Intelligence shows that more than 60% of American consumers used dedicated AI platforms in the past year. Among Gen Z and power users, use of dedicated AI platforms as a first stop for everyday tasks climbed 36% and 28% in one month.
“That acceleration in usage is exactly what makes flat-rate consumer pricing difficult to sustain,” PYMNTS wrote.
Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META, XETRA:FB2A, SIX:FB) shares rose nearly 10% to $619.44 after a report that the company is building a cloud business to sell its excess AI computing capacity.
Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter, said the move could reduce Meta's reliance on advertising and set it against the three firms that dominate cloud infrastructure. For a company that still draws almost all its revenue from ads, that would mark a significant widening of the base.
What Meta is weighing
One option under review is letting customers tap AI models hosted on Meta's own infrastructure. That would resemble Amazon Web Services' Bedrock platform, which sells access to a menu of models on a pay-as-you-go basis.
The idea is not new inside the company. Zuckerberg flagged it at Meta's annual shareholder meeting in May, saying it was "definitely on the table." He said other companies approach Meta almost every week asking to buy access to its models or spare capacity at a premium.
Selling that access would become a live option, he added, if Meta reached a point where it had overbuilt its data-centre capacity.
A hedge against overbuilding
That framing matters. It positions a cloud business less as a bold pivot than as a use for capacity Meta may otherwise leave idle. The company is pouring money into data centres, and a resale market would let it recoup some of that outlay rather than strand it.
The spending numbers behind the strategy are large. Big Tech firms are expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year, up from around $400 billion in 2025. At that scale, even a modest overbuild leaves a lot of expensive silicon looking for work.
Taking on the incumbents
The move would push Meta into a contest with Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, the three companies that have spent a decade building the cloud market. None will cede ground easily, and Meta would arrive as a challenger rather than an equal.
The prize is a revenue stream that does not rise and fall with the advertising cycle. That is the real draw. Meta's ad business is vast but exposed to economic swings and platform shifts, and a cloud arm would give it something steadier to lean on.
I keep buying Meta. Every paycheck, every dip, every time the crowd convinces itself the AI buildout has gone too far, I add more to Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction), and I have not slowed down at $550.25.
The reason is plain. Mark Zuckerberg has built the most profitable attention machine in modern business, and he is about to bolt a prediction market on top of it. Zuckerberg has ordered senior executives to explore partnerships with Polymarket and Kalshi while Meta quietly test-builds a competing standalone app codenamed Arena, designed around a video-game-style points system targeting the 18-to-34 demographic. Combined prediction market trading volume has scaled past $130 billion this year. Meta sits on 3.56 billion daily active people across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. Pairing those two facts is what keeps my finger on the buy button.
The Data Behind the Conviction Start with the core business. Q1 2026 revenue hit $56.31 billion, up 33.1% YoY, with EPS of $10.44 against a $6.66 consensus, a 56.79% beat and the fifth straight quarter Meta cleared the bar. Ad impressions rose 19% YoY and average price per ad rose 12%, which tells me advertisers are paying more for inventory that is also expanding. That is a pricing engine working in both directions at once.
The profitability stack is rare. Gross margin sits at 81.99%, operating margin at 41.44%, return on equity at 30.24%, and return on invested capital at 20.69%. Debt-to-equity is 0.39 and interest coverage is 71.48x. This is a fortress paying a $0.53 quarterly dividend while generating $32.23 billion of operating cash flow in a single quarter.
Then there is the price. META trades at a P/E of 20 with shares down 16.5% year-to-date and 23.97% over one year from $723.76. The 52-week high was $793.65. For a company guiding Q2 2026 revenue to $58 to $61 billion, paying 20 times earnings looks like a gift the market handed me because it is squeamish about capex.
The Risk I Actually Lose Sleep Over Capex. Full-year 2026 capex was raised to $125 to $145 billion, up from prior guidance of $115 to $135 billion, to feed Meta Superintelligence Labs. Reality Labs lost $4.03 billion in Q1 alone and $19.2 billion across 2025. If AI returns arrive late or the EU and U.S. youth litigation lands hard in 2026 trials, free cash flow compresses and the stock gets punished again.
I have weighed it. Operating cash flow ran $115.80 billion in 2025, buybacks hit $26.25 billion, and management still guides 2026 operating income above 2025 levels. Zuckerberg called Q1 a milestone tied to “the release of our first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs” and said the company is “on track to deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people.” I would rather own the company funding the next decade than one defending the last one.
Why the Buy Button Stays Active Three and a half billion daily users. A 41% operating margin. A 20 P/E on five straight earnings beats. A dividend that just started compounding. And a founder-CEO preparing to wire prediction markets into the same feed that already prints $55.02 billion of quarterly ad revenue. Bears can keep arguing about capex while I keep buying the cash machine paying for it.
Meta Platforms (META) is developing a cloud business to monetize excess AI computing capacity, potentially accelerating near-term revenue generation. Nike (NKE) posted strong Q4 results but faces persistent weakness in China, leaving its turnaround trajectory uncertain.
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Stock to Watch: Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) Meta Platforms is the world’s largest social media platform. The company’s portfolio has evolved from the Facebook app to multiple apps, including photo and video sharing app Instagram and WhatsApp messaging app, largely through acquisitions. Along with in-house developed Messenger and newer services such as Threads, these products form Meta’s Family of Apps, which reached about 3.56 billion daily active people on average in March 2026.
META is a #3 (Hold) on the Zacks Rank, with a VGM Score of B.
Additionally, the company could be a top pick for growth investors. META has a Growth Style Score of A, forecasting year-over-year earnings growth of 40.5% for the current fiscal year.
Four analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days for fiscal 2026. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.60 to $33.01 per share. META boasts an average earnings surprise of +12.3%.
With a solid Zacks Rank and top-tier Growth and VGM Style Scores, META should be on investors' short list.
