Zuckerberg: Meta's Enterprise AI Opportunity Extends Beyond Simple Agents
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the company's enterprise AI ambitions go beyond business agents, including APIs, compute sales, and other services, potentially creating new revenue streams beyond advertising and subscriptions.
In June, Meta entered the enterprise AI market with a business agent for customer service and support, but as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday's Q2 earnings call, the company's ambitions are much broader.
Zuckerberg described a large enterprise opportunity to sell businesses a range of services: APIs, business agents, potentially direct compute sales, and other offerings being built for large customers. These additions could create new revenue streams beyond advertising, which drives the bulk of Meta's business, and subscriptions, which contribute a smaller share.
Initially, Meta will focus on serving its existing advertiser base by offering AI agents that work across messaging apps and elsewhere, allowing businesses to interact with customers via an AI interface. Zuckerberg noted that Meta will get paid when it delivers results for those businesses, similar to the ad system.
Zuckerberg also outlined how Meta could expand beyond its current advertiser base (many small businesses) by offering internal tools to external customers in the future. He admitted that selling to enterprises is a "different muscle" than what Meta has historically exercised.
Regarding selling compute to enterprise customers, Meta is balancing revenue needs with executing its own future plans. The company noted it can currently sell compute at "a significant premium over what we paid for it." However, Zuckerberg cautioned that it "would be foolish" to sell all compute for short-term profit, describing the approach as a "portfolio" blending long- and short-term plans for compute infrastructure.
The call also covered Meta's ambitions for agentic AI—systems that act on behalf of a person or business, not just answer questions. These will be offered to consumers as "personal AI agents" and AI smart glasses that interact with the world. Additionally, Meta is using AI (especially large language models) to more rapidly build out its social app suite, with recent launches including apps for Marketplace sellers, Facebook Groups, vibe-coded games, and other experiments.
