Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) Rides AI-Powered Ad Revenue Growth; Citi Raises Target, Citing Early AI Gains

We recently compiled a list of the 10 AI News Investors Should Not Miss. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stands against the other AI stocks investors should not miss.

Artificial Intelligence is a game changer. According to a PwC report, it could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Of this, $6.6 trillion is likely to come from increased productivity while $9.1 trillion is from consumption-side effects. The report also reveals that global GDP will be up to 14% higher in 2030 due to the accelerating development of AI. The greatest productivity gains are likely to go to North America and China, with the former expected to realize the AI benefits faster.

READ ALSO: Top 10 Trending AI Stocks to Watch in November and Top 10 Trending AI Stocks in Q4.

However, the surge in artificial intelligence will require a huge number of data centers, and it is significantly going to impact how much the world consumes power, and how much that is going to cost. To have an idea, on average, a ChatGPT search needs as much as 10 times more electricity to process as a Google search. That said, AI gathering steam is only going to make the power hunger crazier. According to estimates from Goldman Sachs, the data center demand is going to grow 160% by 2030. Presently, data centers consume about 1-2% of overall power, but the percentage is likely to rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade.

The Latest Developments in AI

As we examine the increasing energy demand of data centers stemming from the surge in AI, it’s worth noting how these advancements are manifesting in practical applications. In its latest breakthrough, Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company that builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems, has launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet—their first release in the forthcoming Claude 3.5 model family. The Claude 3.5 Sonnet sets new industry benchmarks for graduate-level reasoning (GPQA), undergraduate-level knowledge (MMLU), and coding proficiency (HumanEval), demonstrating marked improvement in grasping nuance, humor, and complex instructions, and is exceptional at writing high-quality content with a natural and relatable tone.

Another exciting news is how Runway, an AI company shaping the next era of art, entertainment, and human creativity, has launched a new set of advanced AI camera controls for its Gen-3 Alpha Turbo video generation model. These tools allow the user generating videos from text prompts, upload images, or even their footage, to have greater control over the AI-generated settings and characters. Users can even zoom in or out of the scene and subjects without disrupting their realism, creating a more immersive experience of a seemingly 3D world.

In other news, a highly anticipated release that many have been waiting on is seemingly delayed, as per the latest reports. On Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that his company’s next big model won’t likely be released this year. According to Altman, the company is “prioritizing” shipping existing models focused on reasoning and difficult questions.

“All of these models have gotten quite complex and we can’t ship as many things in parallel as we’d like to”. He said the company faces “limitations and hard decisions” when it comes to allocating compute resources “towards many great ideas.”

– Altman wrote during a Reddit AMA.

When asked about the release of ChatGPT-5, Altman stated that the company has some very good releases this year but “nothing that we are going to call GPT-5.”

Our Methodology

For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) Rides AI-Powered Ad Revenue Growth; Citi Raises Target, Citing Early AI Gains

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 219

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a technology company that develops applications and technologies to help people connect, find communities, as well as grow businesses. The company is a top Artificial Intelligence player in consumer internet, investing heavily in AI-related infrastructure, technology, and products.

On October 31, Citi analyst raised the price target on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) to $705 from $645 and kept a “Buy” rating on the shares after the Q3 report. According to the analyst, Meta continues to gain a share of overall ad budgets, with advertising revenue increasing 20% year-over-year excluding currency, along with ad impressions and pricing growth. Moreover, the firm notes that the engagement gains coming from Facebook and Instagram, driven by Meta’s artificial intelligence recommendation engine, demonstrate the early return from its AI investments that “remains early days”. The firm also recommends investors seize any post-earnings selloff in the shares.

Overall META ranks 2nd on our list of the AI stocks investors should not miss. While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than META but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.