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This Week's Exclusive News Meta Platforms' New Bull: Why Billionaire Bill Ackman Is BuyingAuthor: Leo Miller. Published: 2/16/2026. 
Key Points - After a post-earnings surge, shares of Meta Platforms are getting hit.
- However, a high-profile investor is showing his support, investing around $2 billion in the company.
- Pershing Square and Bill Ackman are clearly recognizing the power of Meta's AI-enabled advertising empire.
- Special Report: [Sponsorship-Ad-6-Format3]
Magnificent Seven giant Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), despite failing to hold recent gains, has just received backing from a major investor. Meta shares jumped more than 10% on Jan. 29 after investors reacted to the firm's latest earnings report, closing around $738 that day. Since then, however, the stock surrendered those gains and more, closing near $640 on Feb. 13 — even though Meta is forecasting 30% revenue growth next quarter, a level it hasn't hit since 2021. Large investors are nonetheless buying into the story. One prominent buyer is Pershing Square Capital Management, led by billionaire Bill Ackman. Ackman first rose to prominence by shorting the Municipal Bond Insurance Association (MBIA), which had heavy exposure to subprime mortgage–backed securities during the Great Financial Crisis; that trade generated massive returns after MBIA's stock collapsed. Ackman's willingness to place high‑profile bets has made him a well-known figure in finance. Below we outline Pershing's investment in Meta and the bullish case it has presented. Pershing Takes a Large Stake in Meta Pershing Square published its 2026 Annual Investor Presentation on Feb. 11. The presentation said Meta accounted for 10% of the firm's capital at the end of 2025. That stake is roughly $2 billion. Pershing explicitly pushed back on one common concern about Meta in the presentation: "We believe Meta's current share price underappreciates the company's long-term upside potential from AI and represents a deeply discounted valuation for one of the world's greatest businesses." Pershing also disclosed that, as of Nov. 24, 2025, it had purchased Meta at an average price of $625 — notable given Meta's Feb. 13 close is less than 3% above that level. Together, the size of the stake and Pershing's comments indicate the firm sees considerable upside in Meta shares. Pershing's Investment Thesis on Meta Pershing's presentation (slide 65) outlines the strengths it sees in Meta's business. Interestingly, the slide does not emphasize Meta's general-purpose AI models or a potential leadership role in that specific domain. That omission is noteworthy because some investors worry Meta won't sufficiently benefit from its large AI investments; Pershing's slides implicitly rebut that concern. Instead, Pershing focuses on how AI is driving Meta's core revenue engine: advertising. The presentation calls Meta's business model "one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI integration." Specifically, Pershing points to AI-powered content recommendation systems, which are boosting user engagement, and to improved ad targeting and personalization, which increase advertising effectiveness. That impact can be easy to miss. Hyperscalers such as Alphabet (Google's parent), Microsoft and Amazon can more readily demonstrate ROI from AI through their cloud businesses, where customers rent AI infrastructure. Meta's gains, by contrast, are more embedded within the performance of its advertising products and therefore less visible on the surface. Pershing's view is that the critical metric is return on ad spend (ROAS). AI-driven ROAS improvements make it likelier that advertisers will allocate more of their budgets to Meta's apps. With more than 3.5 billion users, Meta offers an enormous addressable audience, but delivering better targeting and engagement across that scale requires substantial AI investment — which cuts against the argument that Meta's spending won't pay off. Meta's Ads Business Must Keep Performing Pershing's investment is a clear vote of confidence in Meta's outlook. Meta's revenue growth accelerated in every quarter of 2025, and it expects growth to speed up again next quarter — evidence that its AI strategy is having an effect. Still, the company has work to do: sustaining and expanding improvements in its advertising business remains central to the bull case for Meta.
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