In the span of just two weeks, Meta Platforms Inc. has gone from a market afterthought to one of its hottest stocks, as investors finally like what Facebook’s parent is saying about its artificial intelligence plans. The shares are up 17% in July, making them the third-best performer in the S&P 500 Index, putting them on track for their best month since May 2025, and adding almost $250 billion to the company’s market capitalization. That’s a huge turnaround from June, when Meta dropped 11%. The stock is still only flat for the year, but that’s a vast improvement from the first half, when it lost 15%. The rally got started on July 1 when Bloomberg News reported that Meta was developing plans for a cloud-computing business, which sent the stock up 8.8% that day. Last week, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is considering renting some of its AI infrastructure to outsiders given the high demand for computing capacity. The social media giant also recently unveiled a new version of its AI model, Muse Spark 1.1, that includes a new paid tier for developers, the first time Meta has charged businesses to access its models.