Meta Stock Falls As Analyst Warns Of 'Another DeepSeek Momen
Meta Stock Falls As Analyst Warns Of 'Another DeepSeek Moment.' Is Buzzy New AI Tool A Threat?
RYAN DEFFENBAUGH
Shares of Meta Platforms (META) fell Monday morning, joining a broad market sell-off triggered by President Donald Trump's comments on a possible recession and the emergence of another AI challenge from China, dubbed by one analyst "another DeepSeek-like moment."
The slide is set to wipe out all gains from Meta stock's record-setting 20-day winning streak in January and February. Meta stock fell as major indexes were sharply lower Monday, after President Trump declined to rule out a recession. The recession fears pressuring the market in recent weeks have hit the Magnificent Seven – the large tech stocks that powered the S&P 500's rally the past two years – particularly hard.
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Meta also appeared to face a new challenge on the AI front with sudden attention to Manus, an AI assistant developed by a Chinese startup. The product could add to an AI assistant battleground that includes Meta AI, OpenAI's ChatGPT, xAI's Grok, DeepSeek, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, Perplexity and more.
Wall Street analysts are sizing up what the growing competition means for the big AI investments from Meta and other tech giants.
"Another DeepSeek-like moment with Manus AI having released its autonomous agent on March 6 which incorporates reasoning and actionability unlike any other competitor we've seen so far," wrote RBC Capital analyst Brad Erickson in a client note Monday. "We'd expect a bevy of exploration reviews of Manus by developers this week – TBD (to be determined) on any infrastructure implications at this point."
On the stock market today, Meta stock is down more than 4% at 598.74. Shares have not closed below 600 since Jan. 2.
Manus Adds To AI Assistant Battleground
RBC's Erickson — whose stock coverage includes Meta, Alphabet (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) — added that the "breakneck pace of new, innovative AI applications continues to spur debate on what will ultimately be the determinants of winning in AI."
Distribution, or the ability to draw on a large existing user base, will be a crucial factor, Erickson added.
New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon had a similar point in a client note Monday.
"Like other newly developed products from startups, Manus lacks established businesses with billions of users already to whom new AI products can be pushed by Google, Amazon and Meta," Salmon wrote. "These companies will continue to hold this significant advantage for some time."
Meta, for instance, can integrate Meta AI into its existing platforms that together have more than 3 billion active users, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Meta said last month that chatbot had 700 million active monthly users.
"To be sure, Manus' use case demos are impressive and worthy of today's attention, but there are still many details to learn, especially as the product remains in private beta," Salmon added. "For example, what models is Manus utilizing — the company has said simply 'several distinct models' versus DeepSeek, which developed its own foundation models — and has the company developed any new cost-saving innovations for inference?"
Meta Stock Loses Winning-Streak Gains
Meanwhile, Meta's slump has wiped out the big gains it posted during a record 20-day winning streak.
Meta stock closed at 611.30 on Jan. 16 before it racked up gains every trading day through Feb. 14. Shares peaked with a Valentine's Day high of 740.91.
But Meta has closed lower in all but three of the 15 trading days since then. Shares are down more than 18% from Meta's February high.
Meta stock broke below its 50-day moving average trendline on Thursday.
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