Meta Investors Cheer as Zuckerberg Doubles Down on AI Commitment
Meta Platforms Inc. keeps writing bigger checks in pursuit of its artificial intelligence strategy, and traders keep cheering it on, encouraged that the expensive bets will keep paying off.
The stock is back near record territory after soaring more than 40% from its April low. Last week, Meta finalized a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, whose leader is joining a team being assembled by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to pursue artificial general intelligence. That came just after Meta raised its capital spending forecast for 2025 to as much as $72 billion.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meta stock climbs after announcing Whatsapp advertising plans
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) stock climbed 2.8% in pre-market trading after the social media giant announced plans to introduce advertising on WhatsApp for the first time, potentially opening a significant new revenue stream. The company revealed it will add ads to WhatsApp's Updates tab, which is used by 1.5 billion people daily. The new monetization features include channel subscriptions allowing users to pay for exclusive content, promoted channels to help increase visibility, and ads in Status that will enable businesses to showcase products and services. Meta emphasized that these changes will not affect personal chats, which will remain end-to-end encrypted and free from advertising. The company positioned the Updates tab as the appropriate place for these commercial features, keeping them separate from private conversations. This move represents a significant shift in Meta's approach to WhatsApp, which has historically remained largely ad-free since its acquisition in 2014 for $19 billion. The messaging platform's massive user base presents a substantial opportunity for Meta to expand its advertising business beyond Facebook and Instagram. The announcement comes as Meta continues to seek new growth avenues amid increasing competition in the social media landscape and ongoing challenges with privacy regulations. Related articles Meta stock climbs after announcing Whatsapp advertising plans The Trade Desk stock falls on Amazon-Roku partnership concerns Leerink starts coverage on Boston Scientific and Medtronic with bullish ratings Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
My 5 Favorite Stocks to Buy Right Now
Amazon is using artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and drive earnings growth. Meta Platforms and Pinterest are using AI to enhance user engagement and improve ad targeting. Dutch Bros and e.l.f. Beauty both have large potential expansion opportunities ahead of them. 10 stocks we like better than Amazon › With the market no longer being whipsawed around from tariff news, now can be a good time to add some attractive long-term growth stocks. Let's look at five of my favorites. An e-commerce and cloud computing leader, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) across its businesses to drive efficiency, expand margins, and fuel growth. Its cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is both its largest business by profitability and its fastest-growing segment. The growth is being powered by customers using its solutions, like Bedrock and SageMaker, to create their own AI models and apps and then running them on its data center infrastructure. Meanwhile, its proprietary AI chips (Trainium and Inferentia) give it a cost and performance advantage. The company is investing heavily in new AI infrastructure to meet surging demand, and history shows that Amazon tends to spend big to win big. On the e-commerce side, Amazon is using AI a variety of ways to improve the efficiency of its warehouse and logistics operations and reduce costs. This includes such things as using AI to create better routes and maps, to developing AI-powered robots that can lift heavy objects and identify damaged items to reduce costly returns. It's also using AI in its sponsored ad business to better target potential buyers. Combined, these efforts have already been leading to strong operating leverage, but more gains should be in store. Despite the stock's rebound from its lows, Amazon still trades at a historically attractive valuation. While the company is not immune to consumer spending risks, given the strong AI tailwinds it is seeing, the stock looks like a buy at current levels. Like Amazon, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is also leveraging AI to help drive growth. By incorporating AI recommendations into Facebook and Instagram, Meta is increasing user engagement on its social media platforms. The increased amount of time users are spending on its platforms, meanwhile, is leading to more ad impressions. In addition, the company is using AI on the back-end to help advertisers create more attractive campaigns and better target potential customers. This is leading to better ad performance, which is helping drive up ad prices. These dynamics could be seen in Meta's Q1 results, with revenue jumping 16% year over year, driven by a 5% increase in ad impressions and a 10% rise in ad pricing. In addition to AI, Meta also has a big opportunity with its newest social platform: Threads. Meta has a strong history of building social media audiences and then later successfully monetizing them. Threads already has more than 350 million monthly active users and growing, and the company will begin to gradually look to serve ads on the platform in the coming years. While Meta is also exposed to economic and ad spending risks, the stock looks well-positioned to continue to be a long-term AI winner. Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) has undergone a real transformation under CEO Bill Ready. The online vision board company has leaned heavily into AI to make the platform more engaging and more shoppable -- and it's working. Monthly active users hit 570 million last quarter, up 10%, with international growth leading the way. More importantly, Pinterest is finally starting to better monetize these users, especially in the "rest of world" segment, where revenue jumped 49%, and average revenue per user (ARPU) surged 29%. This momentum is being driven by Pinterest's technology upgrades. The company has developed a multi-modal AI model trained on both images and text to better interpret user intent. This is driving more personalized recommendations, while its visual search feature lets users quickly find and shop for products they see in pinned content. On the back-end, its Performance+ platform uses AI and automation to simplify campaign setups, optimize bidding, and improve user targeting. It is still early in its rollout, but it should be a long-term growth driver. Like Amazon and Meta, Pinterest also is exposed to any ad market weakness. However, with a large, undermonetized use base, Pinterest has some strong upside potential from here. Turning to the beauty sector, e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE: ELF) built one of the fastest-growing cosmetics brands in the U.S. by disrupting the mass-market space with on-trend, affordable products and a savvy influencer-driven marketing strategy. While recent growth has moderated, the acquisition of Hailey Bieber's Rhode brand is a potential game changer that could reaccelerate momentum in a big way. Rhode is already a hit with younger consumers, generating $212 million in sales with just 10 products and minimal paid advertising. With e.l.f.'s deep retail relationships, like Target and Ulta Beauty, and Rhode also set to expand into Sephora later this year, e.l.f. has a huge opportunity to grow Rhode's distribution in the years ahead. Rhode also brings in a more affluent customer base and strengthens e.l.f.'s growing skincare presence, complementing last year's Naturium acquisition. While tariff risks remain, this is a company with a huge growth opportunity in front of it. Dutch Bros (NYSE: BROS) is one of the most compelling growth stories in the restaurant space. With just over 1,000 locations in 18 states, Dutch Bros has a long expansion runway ahead of it. It is targeting 2,029 stores by 2029, and believes it has a total market opportunity of 7,000 locations in the U.S. However, the Dutch Bros' story is about more than just unit growth. It's been posting strong same-store sales growth, including 4.7% last quarter. Even better, comparable-store sales at company-owned shops rose 6.9%. That's impressive execution in what was a tough consumer environment. Importantly, Dutch Bros has additional levers to improve its same-store sales with mobile ordering and food. Mobile ordering accounted for 11% of transactions last quarter. Meanwhile, food is less than 2% of sales today, versus 19% at Starbucks. The company has been testing more food items at a few locations with early success. While not immune from any economic weakness, the combination of store expansion, food, and mobile ordering makes the stock an attractive long-term buy. Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,702!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $870,207!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 988% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Pinterest and e.l.f. Beauty. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Meta Platforms, Pinterest, Starbucks, Target, Ulta Beauty, and e.l.f. Beauty. The Motley Fool recommends Dutch Bros. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. My 5 Favorite Stocks to Buy Right Now was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
30 minutes ago
- Forbes
How Online Brands In Regulated Industries Are Building A New Playbook
E-commerce brands in regulated verticals are getting creative with how they reach customers online. Regulated verticals like firearms, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, and medical diagnostics with an e-commerce component face strict marketing limitations and complex legal frameworks. A common obstacle is that mainstream ad platforms routinely suspend these types of brand accounts. Yet despite these challenges, many of these brands aren't just surviving, but thriving. A recent report from RMW Consulting and Shopware, titled 'SpeakEasy Commerce: How to Thrive in Regulated Industries,' highlights how brands in regulated markets are crafting a new playbook for growth and maintaining control to capitalize on big business potential. The challenge is that highly regulated verticals face more complex hurdles than the average e-commerce offering. 'A product might be restricted in one zip code, but legal in another just a few blocks away,' said Eric Barone of eCheckpoint. As a result, some regulated sellers avoid social platforms entirely. Others have to build gated experiences for verified users. For example, a firearms distributor may have to verify age, restrict catalog visibility by geography, and collect FFL license credentials before a customer reaches checkout. However, many e-commerce infrastructures don't tick those boxes for these verticals, and according to the report, as a result, many of these brands live in fear of deplatforming. This leaves brands in what the report dubbed a 'vacuum,' where standard tools like paid social media ads or Shopify plug-ins are either unreliable or unavailable. There are creative workarounds, though. The SpeakEasy Commerce report highlights a CBD wellness brand that invested heavily in SEO 'in lieu of ads.' Strategies like influencer-backed educational content and gated loyalty tiers for its customers took precedence over traditional ads. As a result, web traffic grew 65% year-on-year without any media spend. 'When you can't buy ads, you double down on content and word-of-mouth,' stated the report. This highlights an alternative path for these brands: competitive moats. Some DTC categories might be trend-sensitive, for example, but regulated verticals such as CBD tend to have lower competition and less elastic demand. Today's e-commerce brands can build and market around regulation instead of fighting for a place at the traditional table. This is only now becoming increasingly digital. Successful operators in these verticals are learning to leverage inelastic demand with flexible approaches to online marketing. Composable platforms with open APIs that integrate specialized tools, geo-fenced content rules, and secure portals are helpful here. The shift is drawing the attention of both private capital and software vendors. According to the report, private equity is paying attention 'because these 'backroom' categories are increasingly seen as diamonds in the rough.' It's a way for capital to find growth without viral marketing or network effects, but rather niche expertise and adaptability. Software vendors are noticing, too. Many platforms have deprioritized high-risk merchants. But others, like Shopware, are quietly leaning in, offering options for code ownership. The platform's open-API framework gives high-risk merchants more adaptability in handling platforms with ever-changing rules and regulations. While e-commerce is often a race to scale, there are other opportunities for growth that don't require identifying trend-driven brands. And even headwinds from tight regulation may not be reason enough to avoid these verticals. Companies that know how to leverage inelastic demand with practical solutions for dealing with these regulations can create new growth opportunities outside of social media virality.
