This year, one of the better performers among the Magnificent 7 has been Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META). Its shares have outperformed the broader market and are currently up 46.6% in the past six months, and they hit an all-time high of $796.25 in August. For comparison, other Magnificent 7 members have fared worse. Look no further than Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), which are down 0.7% and up 2.5%, respectively, since the beginning of the year.
Furthermore, strong first-quarter and second-quarter earnings reports lend credence to the claim that Meta will continue to outshine its competitors over the next year. That belief has been bolstered by its recent performance. Since hitting its year-to-date low on April 21, the stock has rallied 52.9%. The near-term future of the economy is uncertain—just like the markets themselves—and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a controversial figure. Certainly, Zuckerberg’s sudden shift to the metaverse and brand name change to Meta Platforms raised a few eyebrows several years ago.
Now, however, the Meta Platforms CEO is shifting the company’s focus and riding a powerful, bullish trend. Against this complex backdrop with many moving parts, investors should consider the wide range of Meta stock price targets and formulate a strategy for all possible outcomes. To help, 24/7 Wall St. conducted some analysis. Let’s jump in.
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Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. Investors should not rely on Meta Platforms’ Reality Labs metaverse business to drive the company’s near-term future growth. In Q2 2025, Reality Labs generated $370 million in revenue, down from $412 million in the prior quarter. During that same time frame, Reality Labs recorded a loss from operations of $4.53 billion.
Unless there is a miraculous turnaround for Reality Labs, Meta Platforms investors should hope that Zuckerberg does not decide to double down on the metaverse this year. Fortunately, it appears that the CEO’s attention has turned to a different tech field lately. In particular, Zuckerberg seems to expect AI to be Meta Platforms’ key driver for 2025. AI integrations into Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp could provide an economic moat for Meta Platforms if new features translate to greater user engagement. WhatsApp, in particular, has seen notable growth with more than 3 billion monthly users now.
Meta’s AI focus evidently helped the company succeed in the second quarter of the year despite losses in its metaverse business. Impressively, Meta Platforms grew its revenue 21% year over year to $47.5 billion, beating Wall Street’s consensus call for $41.3 billion. Furthermore, the company’s earnings per share (EPS) surged 38% to $7.14, easily outpacing the analysts’ consensus estimate of $5.89.
There’s no doubt that Zuckerberg is all-in on the AI revolution now. He envisions a future in which AI will be used for “a lot” of “social tasks.” And he believes it’s “really compelling” that AI will “get to know you better and better.” Some reporters have expressed skepticism of an AI-infused future. Yet, if Meta Platforms can parlay machine learning into profits, investors shouldn’t dismiss the growth potential of Meta stock.
Another key driver for Meta Platforms is its Threads short-form messaging platform. Granted, Threads is still playing catch-up to the popular X platform, which is owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Still, Threads is making inroads as its monthly active user count grew from 320 million in 2024’s fourth quarter to 350 million in Q1 of 2025. That’s not at the level of X, which reportedly has more than 580 million monthly active users. Yet, perhaps AI feature integration can make Threads even more competitive with X in the coming quarters.
The company expects third-quarter 2025 revenue to range from $47.5 billion to $50.5 billion. The Ray-Ban-Meta-AI glasses demonstrate some eye-catching growth for the company, with the products’ sales tripling over the past year.
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It is impossible to know how the economy will perform for the rest of 2025 and beyond. Similarly, it remains unclear whether Meta Platforms will achieve significant returns on its AI investments. These unknowns will not stop analysts from publishing their Meta stock price predictions, though.
BofA Securities has reiterated its Buy rating on the shares, keeping its price target at $900. Cantor Fitzgerald also reaffirmed its positive stance by reiterating an Overweight rating and $920 price target. Guggenheim analyst Michael Morris raised the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms to $800 from $725 and kept a Buy rating on the shares ahead of Q2 earnings. The firm believes that the magnitude of opportunity and the competitive intensity in pursuing AI growth are likely to fuel further “aggressiveness in investment” from Meta and higher levels of sustained capex than the firm previously modeled, the analyst tells investors in a preview.
The aforementioned uncertainties are reflected in the wide range of Wall Street analysts’ price targets for Meta Platforms. The Zuckerberg-led firm has a high price target of $1,086.00, a median price target of $866.85, and a low target price of $616.00. However, the consensus recommendation of 68 analysts covering the stock is to buy shares.
Estimate
Price Target
Change From Current Price
Low
$616.00
−16.0%
Median
$866.85
18.2%
High
$1,086.00
48.1%
David Ramos / Getty Images
Meta Platforms raised its 2025 capex estimate from a range of $64 billion to $72 billion to a range of $66 billion to $72 billion. By now, you can probably guess what Meta Platforms will spend those extra billions on. If you guessed AI, you are correct. More specifically, Meta Platforms’ management anticipates “additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware.”
Hence, the multi-billion-dollar question is whether Meta Platforms can effectively leverage its costly AI enhancements. That’s difficult to predict. The same goes for the state of the economy, which might not support an increase in ad spending if macroeconomic conditions deteriorate in the remainder of this year.
24/7 Wall St.’s Meta forecast is a little more bullish than the mean forecast, calling for the share price to rise to $875.46 by year’s end. That implies a run of 19.4%. It is based on the company’s ability to sustain strong ad revenue while increasing efficiency. This should drive its bottom line despite higher capital expenditures for AI objectives.
Ultimately, your price target for Meta Platforms stock should depend on whether you expect the company to take full advantage of ramped-up AI features. If so, then get ready for Meta Platforms stock to eventually head for new all-time highs. However, it may be a bumpy ride along the way.
Meta Platforms’ AI Bet: Visionary Leap or Reality Labs Repeat?
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