KeyBanc lifted its Meta Platforms price target to $900 from $780 and Cantor Fitzgerald raised its target to $860 from $680, both keeping Overweight ratings and pointing to the Muse AI assistant plus emerging revenue lanes beyond advertising. The moves follow Wells Fargo's revision to $796 from $640, leaving Meta shares near $756 ahead of the Connect event and the Oct. 28 Q3 report.
Two Wall Street firms pushed their Meta Platforms targets sharply higher on Sept. 23, with KeyBanc's Justin Patterson moving to $900 from $780 and Cantor Fitzgerald going to $860 from $680, both maintaining Overweight ratings. The revisions rest on momentum around Muse, the company's personal AI agent, and on revenue lanes the analysts now expect to open beyond advertising.
"Meta now has multiple paths to drive revenue growth," Patterson wrote, pointing to product innovation that he expects to accelerate medium-term revenue and earnings growth and support multiple expansion.
The two calls extend a run of upward revisions on the stock. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised his target to $796 from $640 on Sept. 21, ahead of the company's annual Connect developer conference, which begins Wednesday. Meta shares traded near $756.15 on Sept. 23, up 37.6% over the prior month and 12.9% over the prior week, according to 24/7 Wall St. data. At $900, KeyBanc's target implies roughly 19% upside from that level; Cantor's $860 implies about 13.7%.
Cantor Fitzgerald framed personal agents as a potential "third S-curve" in AI, with Meta positioned as a leading beneficiary. The firm called Muse a "competitive model" trained to lead in agentic tasks and said that while unit economics are currently subsidized, it sees "several paths to a profitable freemium model." Meta launched Muse earlier this month with a free tier and paid plans at $20 and $100 per month depending on usage, rolling out in the United States across iOS, Android, the web and WhatsApp, with support on the company's AI glasses planned.
The bull case rests on the idea that an assistant which books travel, sends emails and fills out forms sits closer to commerce than a feed does, widening what Meta can sell to advertisers and to end users. Meta's Advantage Plus suite has reached an annual revenue run rate above $75 billion, and business agents on WhatsApp represent a second subscription surface.
The counterweight is spending. Meta reported Q2 FY2026 revenue of $60.80 billion, up 27.96% year over year, with advertising revenue of $59.36 billion, up 27%. Diluted EPS came in at $6.18 against a $7.22 consensus, missing by $1.04 as costs rose on $2.40 billion in legal charges and $1.18 billion in severance. Capital expenditure reached $31.1 billion in the quarter, and management guided FY2026 capex to $130 billion to $145 billion to fund AI infrastructure. Operating margin compressed to 31% from 43% a year earlier.
Not every analyst accepts the thesis. Oppenheimer's Jason Helfstein has been skeptical that Muse will reach a scale that matters financially, citing paid-conversion challenges, competition and consumer trust concerns. The stock's 62-analyst consensus stands at Buy, with 47 buy ratings, eight strong buys and seven holds, per 24/7 Wall St. Meta carries a market cap near $1.67 trillion and trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of about 25 to 27, below the multiple the market assigns to several AI peers. The 2026 consensus EPS sits at $31.43, rising to $33.94 for 2027, on revenue estimates of roughly $254 billion and $306 billion respectively.
The re-rating is Meta-specific rather than a sector-wide verdict on agentic AI. Alphabet traded up 2% on the day of the Wells Fargo call while Microsoft was essentially flat, and the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF gained 1.72%, so the sector wind helped without doing the heavy lifting.
For holders, the targets now embed usage numbers Meta has not disclosed. Connect is the first test, and the company reports Q3 FY2026 results on Oct. 28, which will show whether the revenue paths analysts are pricing have begun to appear in the income statement. Until then, the gap between a $900 target and a 31% operating margin is the whole debate.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
