Meta Unveiled an AI Game Builder. Roblox’s Q3 Guidance Shows What the AI Race Costs ©@cottonbro studio from Pexels
Key Stats for Roblox Stock
What Happened?
Roblox Corporation (RBLX) closed down 0.3% on Thursday, <a href="https://comicvibe.com/the-3-best-netflix-shows-to-binge-this-weekend-hands-down-september-25/” title=”The 3 best Netflix shows to binge this weekend, hands down (September 25″>September 24. That day, Meta Platforms unveiled Horizon Create and Horizon Studio, waitlist-only AI tools that turn a typed idea into a mobile game eligible for distribution across Facebook, Instagram, and Horizon. Unity Software fell as much as 6% intraday, and Take-Two Interactive closed down 1.6%. Roblox fell 4.89% to $46.44 on Friday, September 25, though reports differ on the cause. That left it down 42.7% in 2026.
Roblox’s own prompt-to-game tool, Build, has been in a limited public alpha since July 28. The bigger issue sits in its investor relations materials: Roblox is paying for AI while bookings are guided to shrink.
Q3 Guidance Pairs Rising AI Costs With Shrinking Bookings
Roblox guided Q3 bookings to about $1.58 billion to $1.65 billion, down 14% to 18% year over year. GAAP revenue is still guided up 4% to 10%, because it recognizes bookings from past quarters.
On the July 30 call, CFO Naveen Chopra said of Q3’s margin compression that “about half of that is just fixed cost deleveraging coming off the back of the bookings reduction, and the other half is related to these investments in AI.” He said those infrastructure costs are “largely being driven by model training,” so they behave more like fixed costs: sticky if bookings stay soft, leveraged if bookings grow.
Q3free cash flow guidance of negative $60 million to positive $5 million, versus $294 million in Q2, isn’t all AI. It includes previously disclosed back-half-loaded capital spending ($170 million) and a roughly $40 million year-over-year working-capital headwind from the timing of creator payouts. TIKR consensus puts 2026 free cash flow around $911 million. After $890 million in the first half, that implies roughly $20 million for Q3 and Q4 combined.
Roblox ended Q2 with $6.1 billion in cash and investments against $1.009 billion of long-term debt, after about $380 million of Q2 buybacks. It is also starting to charge for AI. Build has paid tiers for power users, and CEO David Baszucki said the photorealistic mode’s infrastructure cost “will initially be offset by subscription.”
The Mean Street Target Fell 67% in a Year, but Roblox Trades at 53x Forward Cash Flow
TIKR’s mean Street target fell from $148 on September 30, 2025, to around $49 as of September 25, about 5% above the share price. Ratings stand at 13 Buy, 4 Outperform, 16 Hold, and 2 Sell. Buy and Outperform combined edge holds only 17 to 16, down from 22 to 12 at the end of June.
