Meta Up 37%: Was It The Muse App Or The Ad Machine

Meta Platforms (META) stock returned 37% in the three months to September 25, 2026. A $10,000 holding at the start of that window was worth about $13,670 at the end. The run came as Meta's ad sales kept growing, and news reports tied the surge to a new AI agent called Muse. Part of that story was public well before the shares moved.

Meta Made Its AI Payoff Public Early

Meta tied its AI work to results as early as its third-quarter 2024 call, held on October 30, 2024. Management said AI picking what people see in their feeds and videos had raised time spent on Facebook by 8%. On that call, Meta said the number of ads it served was up 7%.

Filed results then showed sales growth picking up. Revenue grew 16.1% from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2025. Growth reached 26% in the third quarter of 2025, then slipped to 24% in the fourth. In the first quarter of 2026 it jumped to 33%. Meta filed those first-quarter results on April 29, 2026, about two months before the run began.

The share price had not kept up. The run began in late June 2026. The shares then stood less than 5% above their lowest price in the year to September 25, 2026. Most of the gain came later.

Strong Fundamentals Preceded the September Surge

Meta shares returned more than six times the S&P 500's 5.6% over the same three months. The results for the second quarter of 2026 came during the run. Revenue rose 28% to $60.8 billion. Meta served 14% more ads in the second quarter, twice the 7% growth it reported in late 2024.

Meta's AI-powered Advantage+ ad tools reached a revenue run rate of over $75 billion a year. A run rate is the yearly pace of sales at the current level. That pace is about a third of Meta's total yearly sales.

Most of the gain came in the month to September 25, when the shares returned 31%. In that stretch, Muse rose to the top of Apple's app store. News reports tied the stock's surge to the success of the Muse agent. None of the pre-run call quotes we reviewed mention Muse. While app-driven catalysts like Muse draw headlines, quarterly ad impression growth and pricing remain the core recurring fundamentals to monitor.

What Should You Notice In Meta's Sales Now?

Revenue growth is the number to notice, and it has cooled. It slowed to 28% in the second quarter of 2026, below the first quarter's pace.

Meta expects third-quarter revenue of $61 billion to $64 billion. The same quarter of 2025 brought in $51.2 billion. That range works out to growth of about 19% to 25%. Even the top of it would be slower than the second quarter's pace.

Profit has not kept pace with sales. Operating income, the profit from running the business, fell 8% from a year earlier in the second quarter. That figure was after a $2.4 billion charge for legal proceedings and $1.2 billion in severance costs.

Meta's third-quarter report will show which way sales are heading. To match the second quarter's 28% growth rate, revenue would need to exceed $65.5 billion-well above the upper bound of management's $61 billion to $64 billion guidance range. A result near the low end of guidance ($61 billion) would signal that the revenue acceleration seen earlier in the year has moderated.

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