Meta stock price rallied 4.7% on Thursday, July 9, 2026, as investors warmed to the company’s latest artificial-intelligence strategy following two major announcements: the launch of a new agentic coding model and reports of a custom-chip production milestone.
The stock surge came after Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.1, an agentic coding model designed to compete with leading offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic. According to MarketWatch, Muse Spark 1.1 marks Meta’s first pay-to-use AI model, allowing developers to access it through a new cloud hosting platform called Meta Model API. BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones noted that this monetization represents a clear path for Meta to generate direct revenue from its AI investments, beyond its core advertising business.
The launch addresses longstanding investor criticism of Meta’s AI strategy. For years, Wall Street questioned whether the billions Meta poured into hiring researchers for Meta Superintelligence Labs and building data centers would deliver returns. Earlier reports of Meta’s plan to monetize excess data-center capacity through a new Meta Compute division had drawn mixed reactions from analysts—some saw it as a sign the company had fallen behind in the AI race, while others viewed it as a genuine revenue opportunity.
Custom Chip Production Accelerates Hardware Independence
The stock also received a boost from a Reuters report revealing that Meta is moving its proprietary in-house chips, code-named Iris, into mass production in September 2026. This represents a major hardware milestone for the company, which has been developing its own chips under the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) program since 2023.
According to the Reuters report, Meta plans to double its data-center compute capacity from 7 gigawatts in 2026 to 14 gigawatts in 2027. The shift to custom chips could reduce Meta’s dependency on Nvidia and help lower costs associated with AI infrastructure expansion. Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black estimated that Meta could achieve up to 35% lower data-center costs in 2027 using a combination of Iris and Nvidia chips, particularly for inference and core recommendation workloads.
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill highlighted in a recent note that Meta is likely to continue ramping up its AI spending and cloud ambitions. The company recently brought its Prometheus data center in Ohio online in July, and capacity constraints are expected to tighten further as AI demand increases across the industry.
The dual announcements—monetizable AI software and advancing custom silicon—signal that Meta is beginning to demonstrate tangible returns on its massive AI investments. Analysts see these developments as evidence that the company’s infrastructure spending, which has drawn scrutiny from some investors, may translate into both cost savings and new revenue streams in the near term.
Sources
- MarketWatch — Reported Meta’s 4.7% stock rally on July 9, 2026, following the Muse Spark 1.1 launch and custom-chip production announcement; included analyst commentary from BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank.
- Reuters — Exclusive report on Meta’s plan to begin Iris chip production in September 2026 and double data-center capacity from 7 to 14 gigawatts.
- TechCrunch — Confirmed Meta’s new AI chips will begin production in September 2026.
- CNBC — Reported on Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 launch as an agentic AI coding model designed to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI.
- The New York Times — Covered Meta’s launch of Muse Spark 1.1 as part of the global AI technology race.
