Meta stock rose about 1.5% on Wednesday as broader markets moved higher ahead of a pivotal interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve, while fresh bullish calls from analysts added to the positive sentiment around the social media giant.
The shares have gained about 20% over the past month, extending a recovery that has been supported by new artificial intelligence products, improved monetization prospects and the removal of a major legal overhang.
Meta expands paid subscription push
Rosenblatt reiterated a Buy rating and an $886 price target on Meta following the company’s expansion of its subscription business.
Meta said on Tuesday it was launching its “Meta One” subscription service, offering enhanced AI capabilities and new features across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
The service has already reached 15 million subscriptions and trials during its phased introduction.
Meta said the offering is designed to provide more than 50 features spanning content creation, audience engagement and business management.
Monthly plans for Meta One will start at $2.99 for single products, while individual bundles will cost $7.99. Creator and business bundles will start at $14.99.
Products such as WhatsApp Plus and Instagram Plus will provide app-specific enhancements, while individual bundles will combine those features with more advanced AI capabilities.
The subscription push gives Meta another potential source of revenue beyond digital advertising at a time when competition for online ad spending remains intense.
Meta averaged 3.60 billion daily active people across its family of apps earlier this year, providing the company with a vast potential customer base for paid products.
The company has said its core app functions and basic Meta AI usage will remain free.
Citi sees AI catalyst ahead of Connect
Citi placed Meta on a 90-day upside catalyst watch ahead of the company’s Connect event on September 23, where investors are expected to look for updates on Meta’s artificial intelligence products and broader product strategy.
Analyst Ronald Josey maintained a Buy rating and an $800 price target, implying a 19.4% return from the stock’s last close.
The catalyst watch is scheduled to expire on December 15.
Josey expects Meta to provide updates on Muse, its next-generation AI models and its Meta glasses strategy.
He said Meta’s accelerating product cadence and early adoption of Muse are increasing confidence in the potential returns from its AI investments.
The analyst also highlighted expanding AI use cases across personal, business and enterprise applications.
Citi said improving monetization of Reels, Meta’s enormous user base, engagement growth, advertising innovation and the company’s AI opportunity support its valuation.
At the same time, the bank flagged risks including weaker online advertising spending, intensifying competition, regulatory pressure and difficulties in generating meaningful contributions from Meta’s non-advertising businesses.
Zuckerberg pushes back on AI slowdown calls
Meta’s AI ambitions are also unfolding amid a wider debate over how quickly artificial intelligence companies should develop increasingly powerful models.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that competition and liability give AI companies sufficient incentives to act individually on safety, appearing to diverge from recent calls by some AI executives for a coordinated slowdown in AI development.
In a post on X, Zuckerberg said every AI lab has both the responsibility and incentive to move at a pace that allows its models to be trained safely, while retaining the ability to take its own measures to ensure that happens.
His comments came three days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities, following warnings from several researchers about existential risks.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk publicly endorsed Amodei’s call within hours.
“Trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday.
“Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind.”
Zuckerberg also argued that AI labs have a strong incentive to prevent their models from causing harm because they could face “significant” liability.
He pointed to Meta’s decision to delay the release of its Muse AI agent earlier this year to strengthen its security.
“We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us,” he said.
Legal relief and Muse has added to Meta’s stock recovery
Meta’s recent share-price recovery accelerated after the company settled a major social-media lawsuit and introduced Muse, an AI agent designed to automate everyday tasks for consumers.
The developments have helped revive the investment case around Meta after repeated rallies over the past year struggled to hold.
The roughly $18 billion (about ₹1.7 trillion) settlement of Meta’s social-media lawsuit has also removed a significant source of uncertainty for investors.
Investors looking for a sustained recovery are now watching whether the combination of legal relief, AI product momentum and subscription expansion can support a longer-lasting uptrend.
“Eliminating a legal overhang and then having a positive product in a hot narrative is certainly enough to get the early stages of a trend change going,” Dan Russo, co-chief investment officer at Potomac Fund Management, which owns Meta shares, said in an earlier Bloomberg report.
“We’ve seen a number of these counter-trend rallies fizzle out and fade. What’s key from here is to build on the momentum and validate the changing trend.”
For Russo, that validation would require Meta stock to break decisively above $700 and remain there.
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