Meta Platforms (META) shares are trading higher today after this The information reported that the social media giant is developing its own search engine to reduce its dependence on competitors such as Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft's Bing (MSFT). The new tool will power Meta's AI chatbot, allowing it to directly search the web to answer questions, according to someone close to the project.

This news comes just days after Meta announced a partnership with Thomson Reuters (TRI) that will provide real-time news updates to Meta AI chatbot users. In fact, Meta has been busy this year introducing new features for its AI models. Earlier this month, it launched a tool to check other AI's work for accuracy – a move analysts see as a major step toward developing fully autonomous AI applications. Additionally, Meta released AI tools to help advertisers create videos on their platform.

Due to Meta's continued improvements, investors seem pretty confident about the stock's future. Although current sentiment is neutral, 7.4% of portfolios tracked by TipRanks have a position in META. What's more impressive is that the average portfolio weighting of these investors is 9.11%, meaning they expect the stock to continue to outperform given this relatively large position.

Is META stock a buy?

As for Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating for META stock based on 42 Buys, four Holds, and one Sell over the last three months, as shown in the chart below. After a 91% increase in share price over the past year, META's average price target of $628.77 per share implies an upside potential of 8.92%.

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