Is This AI Stock a Buy After Dropping 20% From Its All-Time High?

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has had a rough go over the past year. It last set a new, all-time high in July 2025, but is currently sitting about 20% down from that level. With the rest of the market rallying and hovering around all-time highs, it may seem like a smart time to look at some stocks that haven't received as much love, like Meta.

Let's take a look at Meta Platforms and see if it's a worthy investment.

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Meta is dirt cheap and growing rapidly

Meta Platforms is probably better known by its former name, Facebook. Despite the name switch, it's still predominantly a social media company, with nearly all of its revenue coming from ads on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. While the metaverse was a flop, Meta is using some of the lessons it's learned and the technologies it's developed to capture a massive, high-potential market: artificial intelligence (AI).

Meta's ultimate goal is to bring a superintelligence platform to the masses in the form of glasses, enabling AI to interact with the real world. If Meta can accomplish this, it will be a major winner, as none of that success is priced into its stock.

Instead, Meta's stock actually looks pretty cheap for how strong the business is. In Q1 2026, revenue rose an impressive 33% year over year. A lot of this growth is coming from rising ad impressions and prices, which have seen a boost thanks to various AI tools being implemented across its platform. As these improvements grow and become more impactful, it will allow Meta's growth to sustain itself for a while until it can hopefully launch a compelling AI product.

You'd think with a growth rate like that, it would trade at one of the highest premiums among its big tech peers, but you'd be wrong. Instead, Meta trades at a discount to its peers that it's growing faster than (as seen in the charts below).

META Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts

As another note, Meta trades for less than 20 times forward earnings, while the S&P 500 trades for 21.8. So not only is Meta cheap compared to its big tech peers, it's also cheaper than the overall market. The stock looks like a rare combination of both value and growth, which makes it an attractive buy right now.

I think Meta is an excellent investment, and the market will come around to it eventually. However, it's currently unloved, and there's no saying how long it will stay that way. If you are looking to get invested in AI without overpaying for a stock, Meta Platforms looks like an excellent stock pick, down more than 20% from its highs, trading at a cheap price, and growing rapidly.

Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.