Street View-Meta's Muse Spark AI model to boost investor confidence

Meta Platforms META.O on Wednesday unveiled Muse Spark, its first AI model from a costly team it assembled last year to catch up with rivals in the AI race

Meta's stakes are high after hiring Scale AI CEO Alex Wang in a $14.3 billion deal and offering engineers hundreds of millions to build a superintelligence team in an effort to rebound from last year's underwhelming Llama 4 models.

META stock is up 0.5% in premarket trading; it had jumped as much as 9.5% before closing 6.5% higher on Wednesday

PAVES PATH TO INVESTOR OPTIMISM

Citi ("buy," PT: $850) says Meta’s Super Intelligence strategy is beginning to come into view with the launch of Muse Spark, which could ease some investor concerns

J.P.Morgan ("overweight," PT: $825) says investor expectations for META’s path to the frontier became quite low following 4Q earnings, management commentary in March and press reports suggesting further model delays and that Meta could leverage Gemini in the interim

The launch of Muse Spark should provide increased confidence in Meta's ability to expand its AI capabilities and that should improve investor sentiment, JPM says

Piper Sandler ("overweight") says it is watching for how Meta uses Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp to facilitate downloads and engagement of Meta AI across its existing base of more than 3.5 billion daily active users