Meta's stock posts best month since 2022 on AI momentum

Meta's stock just wrapped its best month since 2022 as investors cheer the social media giant's recent momentum in artificial intelligence.

The company's shares closed at $725.18 Wednesday, representing a 27% increase from the closing price of $572.34 at the end of August. Wall Street has been optimistic about the company's business since the Sept. 8 debut of its Muse personal AI agent app, which became a major hit and topped rival OpenAI's ChatGPT in Apple iOS downloads.

The last time Meta stock had a bigger month was November 2022, the month OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Meta was rebounding at the end of a brutal year as it was kicking off its efficiency push.

Meta also held its annual Connect conference for developers in September, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized Muse as a "centerpiece" for its product and business strategy while revealing new hardware products such as the Muse Charm AI pendant.

As the company eyes a potential big business in the nascent AI agent market, rivals including OpenAI, which debuted its Dots agent tools Tuesday, are doing the same. Meanwhile, this week Meta also hired MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to head its new business unit called Meta Enterprise Platform while debuting Muse for Small Business agent technologies.

"The enterprise AI solutions market, including cloud capacity, is expected to exceed $1trn by 2028, and we think Meta's consumer data and communications apps could give Meta's advantages for AI enterprise sales to consumer-focused companies," BofA Global Research analysts wrote in a Monday note. "We would expect distribution of Meta's model APIs on leading hyperscaler platforms."

September was also the fifth best month on record for Meta. The stock outperformed all of its mega-cap peers and trounced the Nasdaq, which gained almost 2% over that stretch.

Correction: A prior version of this story referenced an incorrect date for the last big quarter for Meta's stock in the key points.