Meta making encouraging progress along AI product roadmap, says Wedbush

Commenting on Meta Connect 2024 conference, Wedbush notes the event featured new product announcements and updates spanning AR/VR hardware as well as consumer-facing AI applications. The event also featured a glimpse of Orion, a fully functioning prototype of AR smart glasses that blend AR and AI together on one device. The firm thinks Meta is making encouraging progress along its AI product roadmap with Meta AI on track to become the most used AI assistant globally by the end of this year. Meta’s Reality Labs investments are an area of investor debate, with the unit generating -$16.7B of operating losses over the past twelve months. That said, Wedbush thinks Reality Labs investments are becoming more synergistic with the core business as AI becomes a more central component of existing and upcoming hardware products. New products within the Quest 3 family and upcoming AR hardware like Orion present significant optionality for Meta as the company looks to build next generation computing platforms at scale, the firm adds. Wedbush has an Outperform rating on the shares with a price target of $600.