Shares of Meta Platforms (META) are trading higher today after The Information reported that the social media giant was developing its own search engine in order to reduce its reliance on rivals like Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft’s Bing (MSFT). The new tool will power Meta’s AI chatbot, which will let it search the web directly to answer questions, according to someone close to the project.
This news comes just days after Meta announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters (TRI) that will give Meta AI chatbot users real-time news updates. Indeed, Meta has been busy launching new features for its AI models this year. Earlier this month, it introduced a tool that can check the work of other AI for accuracy – a move that analysts see as a big step toward creating fully autonomous AI applications. On top of that, Meta released AI tools designed to help advertisers make videos on its platform.
As a result of Meta’s continuous improvements, investors seem to be fairly confident in the stock’s future. Although the current sentiment is Neutral, 7.4% of the portfolios tracked by TipRanks have a position in META. What is more impressive is that the average portfolio weighting among these investors is 9.11%, which means that they expect the stock to continue outperforming, given this relatively large position.
Is META Stock a Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on META stock based on 42 Buys, four Holds, and one sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 91% rally in its share price over the past year, the average META price target of $628.77 per share implies 8.92% upside potential.
