Meta Platforms shares rose 1.2% in early trading Monday, recovering from an opening dip to trade near $589 after the company outlined plans to expand its artificial intelligence offerings.
The stock, which closed Friday at $578.02, opened at $571.55 before climbing to a session high of $589.19. The advance follows reports detailing Meta’s upcoming AI initiatives and analyst upgrades.
BofA Securities maintained its Buy rating on Meta with a price target of $810, implying roughly 40% upside from current levels. Bernstein separately projected that Meta could surpass Alphabet’s Google Search in total advertising revenue before the end of 2026, citing the company’s strong performance in digital ad spend.
Meta’s consumer-focused AI agent, internally codenamed "Hatch," is scheduled to launch within Instagram and WhatsApp as early as the first week of September. The tool will operate in a virtual computing environment and autonomously handle tasks such as online purchases, restaurant reservations, and email communication. A premium subscription tier for Hatch is under consideration, potentially priced at up to $200 per month.
The company also plans to release a new foundation model, codenamed "Watermelon," in October. This model is expected to serve as the primary inference engine powering Hatch following its initial rollout.
Meta raised its capital expenditure guidance for 2026 to between $130 billion and $145 billion, alongside compressed free cash flow projections. The broader U.S. equity market showed mixed performance, with the S&P 500 down 0.1%, the Dow Jones down 0.1%, and the Nasdaq slipping 0.1% at the time of publication.
