#SocialStocks: Elon Musk prioritizes chips for X over Tesla

Welcome to “#SocialStocks,” The Fly’s weekly recap of Wall Street’s reactions to social media stock news.

QUEST UPDATE: Meta Platforms (META) is rolling out an update to “significantly” reduce the Quest 3’s pass-through distortion and warping, an experimental wrist-mounted menu button option, and more, UploadVR’s David Heaney reported.

CHIP PRIORITIES: Elon Musk ordered Nvidia (NVDA) to prioritize shipments of processors to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and xAI ahead of Tesla (TSLA), CNBC’s Lora Kolodny wrote, citing emails circulated inside Nvidia and obtained by CNBC. Musk has said he can grow Tesla into a major player in artificial intelligence and that the company is spending heavily on Nvidia’s AI processors, but by ordering Nvidia to let X privately jump the line ahead of Tesla, Musk delayed the automaker’s receipt of over $500M in processors by months, Kolodny said.

PARTNERSHIP: Vtex (VTEX) announced its partnership with Pinterest (PINS) to help consumer brands broaden their social commerce footprint and connect with more customers. Through its commerce platform, VTEX’s 2,600 global customers can reach and engage on Pinterest. The collaboration enables customers to integrate their product catalogs, create Pins, and run performant shopping campaigns on Pinterest.

CONNECT: Meta said that the Meta Connect 2024 event will take place September 25-26. During the event, the company will “explore the future of AI and mixed reality and share progress on our long-term vision to help build the metaverse.”

AD BREAKS: Several social media followers have reported seeing “ad breaks” while scrolling through stories and posts on Instagram, noted Emma Roth, for The Verge. Instagram confirmed the sightings of the “ad breaks” which stop the user from scrolling until the advertisement is ‘looked at,” noted the Verge.

SETTLED: Meta has agreed to settle a 2022 lawsuit by Texas accusing the company of using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data of Texans without their consent, Reuters’ Mike Scarcella reported.

DOWN WITH DISINFORMATION: Meta has removed hundreds of Facebook accounts associated with campaigns from China, Israel, Iran, Russia, and other countries, which used AI tools to generate disinformation, Aisha Counts of Bloomberg wrote, citing the company’s quarterly threat report. Among the campaigns, the company found a network in China sharing AI-generated poster images of a fictious pro-Sikh movement and an Israel-based network posting AI-generated comments praising Israel’s military under pages of media organizations and public figures.

NEW THREADS: In a post on Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that starting today the roll out the new threads.net on desktop globally. begins.. “We’re starting to roll out the new threads.net on desktop globally, so you can customize and personalize what you see. We have a lot of great ideas to make this the best website to share ideas, so stay tuned for more and let us know if you have any suggestions ”

GUILTY: Trump Media (DJT) was down 5% at $49 last week as Donald Trump was found guilty in New York hush money trial

SHARK IN THE WATER: “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary has put himself on the list of potential TikTok suitors and he is looking to enlist other investors by measuring interest with a crowdfunding website, Shubhangi Goel wrote for Business Insider. “If the crowdfunding campaign kicks off, it would be subject to US rules that limit investors to people who earn over $200,000 or have specific finance qualifications,” noted the BI story.

ANALYST COMMENTARY: Raymond James increased the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms to $550 from $525 and maintained a Strong Buy rating on the shares. The Street underappreciates Meta’s leadership within foundational generative artificial intelligence “building blocks” like compute infrastructure, AI talent and model performance, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm says the company’s optionality to pursue multiple generative AI models simultaneously while facing minimal core social business risk supports its top pick preference for Meta.