Meta (META) news that moved the stock

What happened

Amazon recently blocked Meta Platforms' Muse AI agent from making purchases on its site, saying it wasn't informed of Meta's plans to give it access to the platform. Entrepreneur and Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote in an X post overnight on Wednesday that 'Amazon banning agents is the first opportunity I've seen since Amazon was founded for a start-up to create an Amazon competitor,' arguing people will want agents to buy things for them and won't want to use an Amazon-supplied agent to do it. Amazon shares fell 1.9% to $255.05 Thursday afternoon. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What happened

Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives, the longtime prominent tech bull, initiated coverage on 49 names across the tech landscape on Wednesday with Outperform ratings across the board, including: Apple (AAPL) $400 and Alphabet (GOOGL) $400 price targets, Amazon (AMZN) $300, Meta (META) $900, Microsoft (MSFT) $615, Nvidia (NVDA) $300, Tesla (TSLA) $500, plus SpaceX at $225. SoftBank was initiated at Outperform with a $290 target and CrowdStrike (CRWD) at Outperform with a $335 target. Ives' thesis centers on the infrastructure layer staying supply-constrained 'through at least 2027,' with companies owning scarce compute, memory, and power capturing growth; enterprise software has recovered, cybersecurity takes a growing share of IT budgets, and 'physical AI' is the newest front. The initiation comes a month after Ives launched the Ives Ultra AI Opportunities closed-end fund (IVAI) targeting late-stage private AI companies.

What happened

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, October 7, 2026 that the European Commission is working on ways to capture more revenue from large U.S. tech groups — including Apple (AAPL), Meta (META) and Google (GOOGL) — through a broad levy on large corporations, in a bid to raise EU revenue while avoiding backlash from the Trump administration. Brussels is considering changes to its 'Corporate Resource for Europe' (CORE) proposal that would require all companies operating in the EU with revenue of more than €100 million ($112 million) a year to pay an annual lump-sum tax contribution, currently set at between €100,000 and €750,000 per company. The reporting cites six EU officials with knowledge of the discussions. Reuters could not immediately verify the report, and the Commission, CCIA, Apple, Google and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

What happened

Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised his price target on Meta Platforms (META) to $1,000 from $796 while maintaining an Overweight rating — one of the highest targets among the 69 analysts polled by FactSet (average target: $796.79). At the same time, he cautioned that 2027 will likely be a 'trough' year for earnings, with the new Muse AI agent generating only modest revenue. He expects Wall Street's fiscal 2027 consensus estimates to need a 'meaningful reset,' citing rising infrastructure costs and a $5 billion loss in capacity resales as Meta keeps all of its hardware for Muse. After that reset, he expects Meta to become a 'positive revisions story' as massive, high-margin AI revenue begins in 2028.

What happened

Citi analyst Atif Malik maintained his Buy rating on AMD and raised his price target to $800 from $575 — a 39% hike implying ~27% upside from Monday's close — in a note published Tuesday, Oct 6. Malik argues Meta's Muse personal AI agent and other recently launched agentic-AI products (Dots, Instinct, GrokBot, GeminiSpark) will drive orders-of-magnitude more CPU demand than traditional chatbots, because agents operate continuously rather than idling between interactions. He projects the CPU industry will grow 60% a year on average through decade's end, becoming a $300 billion market. In the same wave, Mizuho's Vijay Rakesh reiterated outperform on AMD and raised his target to $705 from $580, citing Muse and OpenAI's Dots; he also raised price targets on buy-rated Dell (DELL), Sandisk (SNDK) and neutral-rated Super Micro (SMCI), and lifted Intel (INTC) to $114 from $92. Citi also reiterated its Buy on Nvidia ($315 target) on GPU demand uplift. AMD rose ~1.9% in premarket trading to around $643.

What happened

The seven mega-cap companies — Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Tesla — ended Monday's trading with a combined market capitalization of $24.836 trillion, a new record, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Nvidia, the largest company by market cap, finished the day with a record-high stock price, closing at $237.58 (+2.1%) for a market capitalization of roughly $5.76 trillion. Microsoft rose 1.5%, ending at its highest level since last October and moving back toward a $4 trillion market cap. The record aggregate is larger than the nominal GDP of every country in the world except the United States.

What happened

BofA Securities said Apple faces competitive risks — and potential loss of service revenue — because of Meta's Muse, Meta's enterprise AI assistant. Apple fell 2.1% on Tuesday while Meta rose 2.1%, making the pair one of the day's clearest cross-currents: a Mag 7 winner (Apple, +20%+ YTD) pressured by a competitive AI threat, and a Mag 7 laggard (Meta) getting credit for its enterprise AI push.

What happened

Following CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keynote on the night of Wednesday, Sep 23, 2026 at Meta's annual Connect developer conference in Menlo Park, CA, Meta shares were down about 2% ahead of the opening bell on Thursday, Sep 24, after rallying in the days leading up to the event. Zuckerberg unveiled new smart-glass models — including an audio-only Ray-Ban Meta Audio ($349, shipping Oct 13, the first camera-free pair) and the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta ($449, on sale now) — plus the $1,299.99 Meta VR Glasses (spring 2027, ~100g frames with a tethered compute puck, 5K Infinite Display) and the Muse Charm, a palm-sized/keychain AI pendant for the Muse personal AI agent shipping for the holidays. He also announced an FDA-cleared hearing-enhancement feature for the glasses and said Muse would evolve into 'personal superintelligence' used by billions.