5 big analyst AI moves: Meta gets Street-high PT; Salesforce double upgraded Vahid Karaahmetovic Sun, October 18, 2026 at 3:48 AM EDT 6 min read META -3.72% CRM -2.45% ^GSPC -1.09% DELL -4.58% ADBE -2.57% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Investing.com -- Here are the biggest analyst moves in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) for this week.
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This week, Truist Securities has raised its price target on Meta Platforms to $1,000 from $763, joining Wells Fargo as the highest on Wall Street, citing early traction for its Muse AI agent.
Analyst Youssef Squali kept a Buy rating and added a Muse contribution to his outer-year estimates, with a base case of $28.5 billion in incremental revenue by 2030. Meta shares have risen 21% since Muse launched on September 8, against a 2% gain for the S&P 500.
"With AI infusing higher performance across ads, wearables and Muse (building non-ad revenues from powering personal superintelligence, Muse for Enterprise/SMBs), we see Meta as an AI winner long-term," Squali wrote.
He expects third-quarter revenue of $63.9 billion, up 25% year-over-year and at the high end of management's $61-64 billion guidance, with cost per thousand impressions rising by double digits again, helped by adoption of Meta's Advantage+ automated advertising suite.
"Meta's growth [is] increasingly driven by monetization and retention rather than net new users, in our view," he said.
Truist forecasts 2027 capex of $190 billion, up 32% year-over-year, against a consensus of $193 billion.
In another bullish move, Bank of America has double-upgraded Salesforce to Buy from Underperform and raised its price target to $285 from $160, reversing its previous concern that AI would disintermediate the software company.
Analyst Tal Liani said conversations with CIOs and other market participants suggest large enterprises are unlikely to replace platforms that house their business logic, data, workflows and compliance frameworks. "If anything, AI should deepen dependence on these platforms," he wrote, adding that "we believe Salesforce offers one of the most comprehensive approaches to enterprise AI adoption."
Liani outlined a four-layer architecture underpinning the bull case: a data layer that establishes governed context; applications such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud providing business logic and workflows; the agentic layer led by Agentforce supplying reasoning and orchestration; and Slack and the Anthropic-powered Claudeforce enabling natural-language interaction.
He argued that vibe coding and in-house development may address isolated use cases but fall short in managing enterprise-scale data, governance and workflow complexity.
AI revenues remain small and slower-than-expected adoption is the main near-term risk, though Liani pointed to encouraging signs including strong growth in new deal sizes and accelerating performance at Slack. BofA raised its subscription and support revenue growth forecasts for fiscal 2028 and 2029 to 10.4% and 10.5%.
Barclays has downgraded Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NetApp to Equal Weight from Overweight, saying valuations have run too far with no meaningful enterprise AI inflection yet in sight.
Analyst Tim Long noted the seven enterprise-exposed stocks in his coverage are up an average of about 140% this year against a 12% gain for the S&P 500, with the group now trading at about 21 times estimated 2027 earnings, well above its five-year average of around 15 times.
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Dell shares have climbed well over 200% this year, much of it reflecting how well the company has offset memory cost inflation by raising prices. Long's model has AI server revenue tripling to $75 billion this fiscal year, with potential upside to his $100 billion estimate for fiscal 2028, though growth should decelerate.
"As a result, we expect a meaningful deceleration in growth over the next two years as memory prices normalize and potentially decline," he wrote. Long still sees upside to earnings estimates but said "the scale of the beats should become much smaller," which may limit further gains.
Separately, Barclays strategist Emmanuel Cau said hot inflation data, renewed Middle East tensions and a sharp selloff in chip stocks are testing the bank's "narrow path higher" thesis for equities, though he attributes much of the weakness to positioning rather than fundamental deterioration.
"Arguably, developments this week were rather unhelpful," Cau wrote, pointing to hot U.S. CPI and PPI prints reviving tightening concerns, Brent crude hitting fresh highs and a sharp drop in semiconductor stocks. The silver lining is that bond yields have eased, suggesting "bonds can still work as safe havens again."
Cau attributed the chip weakness to three factors: intensifying competition in global memory, which hit Korean stocks hardest; renewed funding and valuation concerns after two Asian data center companies delayed IPOs; and continued scrutiny over whether AI capital spending is translating into meaningful revenue.
He said he is less concerned about the memory competition issue and noted underlying fundamentals remain intact, citing strong demand guidance from ASML and TSMC.
That said, Cau said the AI theme is entering "a more mature phase," with valuations, funding needs and revenue visibility facing greater scrutiny. "It is certainly conceivable that the best of the AI thematic trade may be behind us," he wrote, adding that investors should become "far more selective," favoring companies with proven business models, strong cash flows and reasonable valuations.
Mega-cap tech earnings in the coming weeks will be key, Cau continued, while Europe remains a useful diversifier given its lower AI and semiconductor concentration.
Earlier in the week, HSBC downgraded Adobe to Hold from Buy and cut its price target to $267 from $310, flagging headline risks from a free open-source clone of its Creative Cloud suite.
Stephen Bersey, HSBC's head of U.S. technology research, pointed to reports that ArtCraft — apparently a firm of just a few people — has released what he believes is an auto-coded free clone of Adobe's software, including versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Acrobat, with the firm saying it hopes to reach "100% feature parity" within a month.
Bersey distinguished auto-coding from professional vibe coding, where a human reviews code before it is committed, noting it hands full control to the model with minimal human oversight.
"We see many dangers attached to auto-coding projects from both a security, legal, going concern and maintenance perspective, and see this more impacting 'freemium' and open source enthusiasts for the time being," he wrote, advising users to avoid the download given that open-source code allows AI to identify hacking exploits.
HSBC cut its revenue estimates by about 1% and adjusted earnings estimates by 1-2%, reflecting the risk that some amateur retail users migrate away. Adobe trades at nine times estimated 2027 adjusted earnings against a sector median of 20.7 times, a discount Bersey said is warranted, having identified Adobe as "a realistic candidate for AI-led disruption."
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