Meta (META) Enters $500 Billion Market: Buy the Stock?

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) makes most of its money selling ads across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, but a report that it plans to launch its own cloud computing arm sent the stock surging this week and reshaped how Wall Street is pricing the company.

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Why The Cloud Report Moved The Stock So Much

Shares of Meta jumped roughly 9% earlier this week after Bloomberg reported the company is preparing to sell cloud infrastructure services, a move that tacked on about $150 billion in market value in a single session. That kind of pop on non-earnings news is unusual for a company already worth close to $1.48 trillion, but investors clearly liked the idea of Meta turning its enormous chip and data center buildout into a second paying business instead of just an advertising cost center.

Meta hasn't confirmed the plan itself, though CEO Mark Zuckerberg said weeks ago that a cloud unit was