Meta boosts its AI bets, shares rise in pre-market trading
Shares of Meta Platforms rose by approximately 1.90% in pre-market trading, buoyed by the launch of its new open-weighted AI model, Muse Glimmer, which targets proxy tasks and can run on a laptop with a single graphics card. The company also announced plans to make its Muse Spark 1.2 model weighted, a move that boosted investor confidence in Meta's super-intelligence labs' ability to translate its massive infrastructure investments into tangible results.
This coincided with Mark Zuckerberg's call to ease US restrictions on open-source AI, amid increasing competition from Chinese companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba. Meta continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure, with capital expenditures for 2026 projected to be between $130 billion and $145 billion.
The stock's rise came despite weakness in major US indices, suggesting that the gains were driven by factors specific to Meta. However, concerns remain about the rising costs of artificial intelligence and return on investment, especially with UBS warning that volatility in the technology sector could reach levels similar to the dot-com bubble period.
