Meta's Commerce Bet Meets a Courtroom Verdict: Inside a Week of Highs, Headwinds and Hard Questions
Published on 09/27/2026 at 14:11 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Meta wrapped up a turbulent stretch of trading on Friday with its shares at EUR 659.70, capping a week in which the stock touched a 52-week peak of EUR 685.90 before surrendering ground. The pullback amounted to 3.5% on the day, a retreat that followed a blistering run-up and arrived alongside fresh concerns about whether the company's ballooning AI budget can eventually pay for itself.
The scale of that run is hard to overstate. Reuters put the week's advance at roughly 13%, while Bloomberg calculated a 36% gain across September through Thursday. Driving much of the enthusiasm was Muse, the company's new AI assistant, which on Tuesday unseated ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's App Store and Google Play across the United States and Canada. That surge in downloads had, for a time, pushed aside nagging doubts about the enormous sums being poured into infrastructure.
From Ad Machine to Shopping Platform
For years Meta has leaned on digital advertising for about 98% of its revenue. Executives now want to change that equation. Speaking at the Connect developer conference, they unveiled partnerships with major retail players — Shopify, Walmart, Best Buy and Sephora among them — that will let users browse and pay for products without leaving the app. Each completed purchase would generate an intermediary fee for Meta.
The company is also rolling out paid tiers. Basic services stay free, but extended subscriptions carry monthly charges of USD 20 or USD 100. A separate paid offering, Meta One, went live on September 15 across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and, according to the company, reached 15 million subscriptions and trial sign-ups at launch.
Hardware is the other half of the push. Muse Charm, a pocket-sized pendant designed for continuous voice interaction without a smartphone, is slated for the holiday season. A new computer glasses product is planned for spring, and Meta has announced its own VR headsets at USD 1,299.99 for spring 2027. Charm itself carries a roughly 2-inch touchscreen and 5G connectivity, with a December release timed to Christmas.
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Not every integration has gone smoothly. Amazon declined to give the new agent access to its marketplace.
The Bill Behind the Ambition
Funding this expansion falls on a balance sheet already stretched by data-center spending. Management has pegged capital expenditures for the current year at as much as USD 145 billion, and the company's Hyperion data center is being financed through multibillion-dollar bond issuance — a clear signal of just how much capital is required.
Piper Sandler analysts took an upbeat view on Friday, lifting their price target to USD 875 and projecting substantial incremental revenue from Muse transactions and subscriptions by the end of the decade. Credit markets are less sanguine. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, pointed to rising hedging costs and growing leverage among large technology firms funding their data centers. Investors, he suggested, will soon demand proof that these AI tools can throw off sustainable free cash flow.
Legal and Security Clouds Gather
The week's gains were shadowed by developments beyond the balance sheet. On Friday, a jury in the US state of New Mexico found the company liable for misleading residents about Facebook's data practices. A judge will determine financial penalties, while state authorities weigh operational requirements.
That same day, Meta attached a more prominent warning label to Muse after an expert flagged a vulnerability that could theoretically have allowed access to sensitive user data within a dedicated virtual machine. Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, the company had ended a test in which outside contractors handled queries through Muse, following employee concerns about data privacy.
Whether the AI assistant becomes a dependable second pillar alongside advertising now rests on how readily users and merchants embrace it — and on whether the courtroom and the credit markets allow the spending spree to run its course.
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