Meta shares climbed 2.6% on Monday to US$702.12, edging closer to February’s record high of US$740.91. The stock has now surged 45% since its April low, fuelled by investor optimism around the company’s accelerating AI strategy and new monetisation efforts.
Last week, Meta finalised a US$14.3bn investment in Scale AI, whose CEO will join the elite team Mark Zuckerberg is assembling to pursue artificial general intelligence. The deal follows Meta’s revised capital spending guidance of up to US$72bn for 2025—a sharp increase that highlights the company’s AI ambitions.
Meanwhile, Meta announced it will begin serving ads in WhatsApp’s Updates tab—a significant move to monetise a platform with over 2 billion users. Analysts see it as an important new revenue lever.
Oppenheimer raised its price target for Meta to US$775, citing a better-than-feared ad environment and upgrading revenue forecasts for 2025 and 2026. The stock is up 16.5% year-to-date, outpacing most of its tech peers despite concerns over rising capital outlays and potential delays to key AI product rollouts.
