10 Best S&P 500 Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds

2) Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 219

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) operates as a social technology company.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has been dominating the social media landscape, while, at the same time, continuing to aggressively invest in AI and emerging technologies. The company’s AI initiatives have been showing promising results. It reported that its AI-driven improvements continue to enhance ad delivery efficiency and improve return on ad spend (ROAS) for advertisers. Additionally, Meta AI has been gaining traction, with the company expecting that it will become the most widely used AI assistant by 2024 end.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s AI investments tend to go beyond advertising, with the company establishing new features such as AI Studio and Business AIs. These are anticipated to result in additional monetization opportunities throughout its platforms. Its focus on open-source AI compute platforms can act as a strategic growth enabler, potentially positioning Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) ahead of competitors.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) expects to incur significant capital expenditure towards AI research and product development efforts. The company anticipates full-year 2024 capital expenditures to be between $37 billion – $40 billion. Wall Street sees these investments as crucial for its long-term competitiveness and growth potential. Mizuho upped its price target on the company’s shares from $600.00 to $650.00, giving an “Outperform” rating on 17^th October.

Baron Funds, an investment management company, third quarter 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:

“Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), the world’s largest social network, were up this quarter, due to impressive top-line growth of 22% year-over-year and solid forward guidance. Despite its large scale, Meta continues to outgrow the broader digital advertising industry, with better AI-driven content recommendations increasing engagement in products like Instagram Reels, and AI improving ad targeting and conversion rates. Our industry checks have continued to validate advertiser adoption and satisfaction, with improvements in Reels monetization, as well as strong adoption of Advantage+, Meta’s AI-driven service to allocate advertiser budgets across its content surfaces.

Meta continues to innovate in Gen AI, with a leading AI research lab and the best open-source models to date. We believe CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s open-source approach will encourage a broader developer ecosystem and standardization based on Meta, which will be beneficial for the company even if Meta doesn’t directly monetize model usage over the near term. In a blog this summer, titled “Open Source AI Is the Path Forward,” Zuckerberg laid out his case:…” (Click here to read the full text)