Meta Platforms (META), which is the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, added nearly $48 per share to its value just less than a couple of weeks after its first daily close above $700 in mid-June. I believe that the current peak of $747.90 on June 30 technically leaves more space for further move up to at least $788, as this price target corresponds to the psychologically crucial milestone of $2 trillion in the market caps for the communications industry giant and roughly fits to some previous growth impulses for Meta stocks. It's very unlikely that Meta bulls or simply Meta realists may encounter any obstacles along this way. Anyway, I don't have the faintest idea of selling my personal stake in Meta before reaching the range between $788 and $800, and will also likely hold most of it waiting for a higher goal around $850 for the rest of the year.

In fact, an initial Wall Street's crowd response above $788 will show whether bets on a climb higher are worth worrying about. But right now there is definitely nothing to worry about, and I can be calm and happy, as there are still solid fundamental drivers behind Meta's strengthening. Recent reports have shown that Meta is embarking on a massive acquisition move, finishing advanced talks to get voice-cloning startup Play AI. Alongside bolstering its own AI research talent pool for even smarter context advertisement services, this means that Meta is ready to flesh out its consumer-facing features. Play AI lets anyone clone different kinds of voices that they can use for AI-powered use cases.

Therefore, Meta integrates some of PlayAI voice replication cutting-edge employees into its social networking projects, which are already used by almost 3.5 billion people worldwide. Meta announced significant user growth in the last quarter (Q1 2025), with its whole family of apps reaching 3.43 billion daily active users on average in March 2025, representing another 6% increase YoY, including Facebook's monthly active users increase by 3.44% for the annual period. This coincided with a quarterly EPS beat of $6.43 against $5.24 in consensus in late April. It was exactly the moment when Meta impressed the investment community with its plans to leverage more AI for ad targeting with day-to-day recommendations to visitors. Two full calendar months have passed since then, and Meta's positioning became only stronger.

Among the latest news is that Meta is hiring OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal for its AI reasoning team, according to TechCrunch. Trapit Bansal, who left OpenAI had been with the GPT (generative pre-training transforming) pioneer company since 2022 and played a crucial role in developing reinforcement learning alongside OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, so both of them are credited as major contributors to OpenAI’s first AI reasoning model, o1. OpenAI and Google are now rivals of Meta, which the latter may bypass on a turn.

Another story from last Friday says that Meta seeks as much as $29 billion from private capital firms like Apollo Global Management, Brookfield, Carlyle and PIMCO for growing AI data centers in the US. They invited Morgan Stanley to arrange the financing. Meta wants to raise $3 billion in equity and $26 billion more in debt, with a fundraising coming at a time when Meta has already doubled down its commitment to AI, including a $14.8 billion of recent investment in startup Scale AI. Meta's efforts are further strengthened by the fact that renewable energy developers and Meta have officially signed deals to supply 791 megawatts more of solar and wind power to operate US new data centers. The company is also seeking proposals from nuclear power developers, which the Trump administration could give the green light to.

My targets, raised to $788-800 at least and then probably further to the upside, look absolutely realistic, as even those investment houses that kept their bars low are now reviewing upwards. As an example, Oppenheimer lifted its Meta price target to $775 from $665, expecting the giant to "unlock new business with AI", citing a stronger macro and advertising backdrop. The broker maintained its Outperform rating for Meta while noting its "improved ad market conditions" even "relative to six weeks ago" and lifting sales projections for 2025 and 2026 by 4% and 1%, respectively, to grow by 17% and 15% in the nearest two years. Oppenheimer’s updated estimates are optimistic even with acknowledged risks tied to TikTok, assuming no US ban on it. Meta EPS estimates were raised by Oppenheimer to $25.41 for 2025 and $28.23 for 2026, representing annual growth of 6% and 11%.