Meta’s stock best week in over two years optimism builds AI strategy
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the annual Allen and Co. event held at Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA on July 9, 2026. Attended the Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Meta As optimism builds around CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s artificial intelligence strategy, shares rebounded on Friday to extend weekly gains to 15%, on track for their best weekly performance since the beginning of 2024.
Three months after introducing Muse Spark, its first proprietary AI model, Meta made two major announcements this week. Meta on Tuesday launched Muse Image, a new AI model for creating images, part of an effort to attract creators and advertisers to its offerings. On Thursday, the company introduced Muse Spark 1.1, which aims to run agency and coding workloads.
This week’s announcements suggest that Meta is aggressively trying to make a splash in AI models and compete against OpenAI, Anthropic, and Anthropic. GoogleThey all have great advantages. They also underscore the company’s efforts to diversify beyond advertising with new revenue streams and highlight progress at Meta Superintelligence Labs, led by Alexandr Wang.
Five-day Meta stock chart.
With the latest rally, the stock has erased this year’s losses and is now up more than 2%. Still far behind Nasdaq, which gained 13%
Meta also got a boost from reports that the company was making progress on custom in-house AI chips announced in March as part of its data center expansion plans. According to Reuters, Meta plans to start producing its first chip, codenamed Iris, in September as part of its goal to reach 14 gigawatts of computing power next year.
“Meta may have achieved significant cost savings to keep the capacity cost per MW well below our and the Street expectations,” Justin Post, a Bank of America analyst, wrote after the report.
—CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
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