Meta Stock: Can AI Agents Transform Its Advertising Empire?

Going Public With Ross Mandell

Ross Mandell explores Meta's strategic pivot from an attention-based advertising model to an action-oriented AI agent ecosystem. He highligh

Key takeaways

• Meta is trading at approximately $670 per share with a market value of roughly $1.7 trillion.
• The launch of Muse marks a fundamental shift from AI that answers questions to AI that takes action.

Main topics

• Meta's Muse AI agent
• Transition from attention to transaction economy

Notable quotes

A chatbot gives you information. An agent takes action.

Conclusion

Investors should evaluate Meta not just as an ad company, but as a pot

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Wall Street thinks it knows Meta. I think Wall Street is still looking in the rearview mirror because if Meta gets this next move right, stock investors think they understand today could look very different a few years from now. And if you own Meta or you are thinking about owning it, this is the part of the story you cannot afford to miss. Speaker 1 (0:25) What's shaking, everybody? My name is Ross Mandel, and welcome to Going Public. Meta is already one of the most powerful companies in the world, but I believe investors are still underestimating what it could become next. Because the next chapter of Meta, it isn't about where Facebook and Instagram have been. It's all about AI. commerce and billions of users could reshape this entire business. That's where this story gets really interesting. Today is September the 16th, 2026. Meta is trading around $670 a share with a market value of roughly $1.7 trillion. Meta is already one of the largest companies in the world, yet it continues to grow at a pace you would normally associate with a much smaller business. That gets my attention. But now Meta is entering an entirely new phase. Meta has just launched Muse. And Muse is not just another chatbot. It's Meta's personal AI agent designed to actually take action for you. You can give it a task and Muse can help do the work. Research something, organize a plan, book travel, fill out forms, help make a purchase or manage everyday tasks across the apps and services that you use every day. That is a very different kind of AI. We're moving from artificial intelligence that simply answers questions to artificial intelligence that can actually get things done. And for a company with billions of users already inside its ecosystem, that could open an entirely new door. A chatbot gives you information. An agent takes action. A chatbot might tell you what restaurant to go to. An agent can book it. A chatbot tells you which flight is cheapest. An agent can help buy it. A chatbot helps you write an email, hopefully. An agent can send it after you approve it. That is a completely different economic model. We are moving from AI that talks to AI that actually does. And when AI starts doing things, commerce comes right behind it. That is why Muse matters. Meta has something almost nobody else in the AI race has at this scale. distribution. Billions of people are already using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, especially me. Meta doesn't need to convince 3 billion people to come into its ecosystem. They're already standing inside the store. That may be one of the biggest advantages in all of consumer AI. Everybody keeps asking, who has the best model? I'm asking a different question. Who has the shortest distance between an AI capability and billions of real human beings? That answer puts Meta in a very interesting position. And Wall Street is just starting to notice. JP Morgan recently upgraded Meta and raised its price target, pointing in part to the opportunity around Muse and Meta's ability to distribute AI across a massive user base. Now, I never buy a stock because an analyst raises a target. That's not investing. But I do pay attention when the reason behind the upgrade lines up with what I'm already seeing in the business. And this is what I'm seeing. Meta is no longer just asking, how much more money can we make from advertising? And they make money. But now it is asking, how many businesses can we build on top of billions of users? Advertising, AI agents, commerce. Speaker 1 (4:50) Payments, business automation, subscriptions. And now we're seeing Meta experiment with paid AI functionality across all of its major platforms. And that matters. I mean, for years, Meta monetized people primarily by monetizing their attention. You use the product for free and then advertisers pay to get in front of you. That model created one of the greatest cash machines in the history of human technology. But now Meta is testing another layer, the user paying directly. So imagine where this can go, advertising revenue. Subscription revenue, commerce revenue, business agent revenue, potential transaction revenue, all riding on top of the same enormous network. That's why I keep coming back to this company. Not because I suddenly think Facebook is exciting. It is, by the way. But because the company behind Facebook is now becoming something much, much bigger. Now let's talk about the machine funding. all of this advertising. Last quarter, Meta generated roughly $55 billion in advertising revenue for the quarter, up about 33 % year over year. Now stop there. This isn't a startup growing 33 % off a tiny base. This is one of the largest businesses in the world, adding enormous