Meta Eyes Bigger Enterprise AI Business Beyond Agents, Zuckerberg Says

Meta's push into enterprise artificial intelligence could extend well beyond AI agents, with the company considering opportunities ranging from APIs and productivity software to selling computing capacity directly to businesses.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined those ambitions during the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, expanding on the enterprise AI strategy the company began pursuing in June with the launch of an AI agent for businesses.

“We see a large enterprise opportunity to sell to businesses, including APIs, business agents, potentially selling compute directly, and other services that we’re building for large customers,” Zuckerberg told investors.

The strategy could eventually provide Meta with additional revenue streams beyond advertising, which continues to generate most of the company’s revenue, and subscriptions, which account for a smaller portion.

Meta will initially target its existing advertisers

Meta’s first major enterprise AI opportunity will centre on businesses already using its advertising and messaging platforms.

The company plans to offer AI agents capable of working across messaging applications and other services, allowing businesses to communicate with customers through AI-powered interfaces.

Zuckerberg compared the potential business model with Meta’s advertising operation, saying the company could be compensated when its AI systems deliver measurable results for businesses.

Meta views the strategy as an extension of its existing relationships with millions of advertisers and hundreds of millions of small businesses already using its platforms.

Internal Meta AI tools could be offered to other companies

Zuckerberg also suggested that Meta could eventually sell technology originally developed for its own employees to external enterprise customers.

The company is developing AI-powered coding, software development and internal productivity tools because Meta itself needs them. Once those systems have been developed and refined internally, Zuckerberg believes they could also become useful products for other businesses.

That could allow Meta to expand beyond the smaller companies that make up much of its advertiser base and pursue larger enterprise customers.

Zuckerberg acknowledged, however, that enterprise sales represent a different type of business from the markets Meta has historically served, describing it as a “different muscle” for the company to develop.

Meta considers selling excess AI compute

Another potential enterprise business involves Meta’s massive computing infrastructure.

The company indicated during the earnings call that it currently has opportunities to sell computing capacity at a significant premium compared with what it paid for that infrastructure.

However, Zuckerberg cautioned against prioritising short-term revenue by selling too much compute that Meta may eventually need for its own AI ambitions.

He described the company’s strategy as a portfolio approach that balances immediate commercial opportunities with longer-term infrastructure requirements.

Those requirements could become particularly important as Meta works toward what Zuckerberg describes as personal superintelligence. He said reaching that stage would require hardware capable of allowing users to interact seamlessly with increasingly powerful AI systems.

AI agents are also coming to consumers

Meta’ss agentic AI ambitions are not limited to businesses. The company is also developing personal AI agents for consumers, along with AI-powered smart glasses capable of understanding and interacting with the physical world around their users.

Agentic systems differ from conventional chatbots because they are designed to perform tasks on behalf of users or businesses rather than respond to questions.

Meta is also using large language models internally to accelerate the development of new applications across its social platforms.

Recent experiments include an application for Marketplace sellers, another designed around Facebook Groups and a product for vibe-coded games, alongside other projects.

Zuckerberg said AI should make it considerably easier for Meta to launch new applications, with the company’s recommendation systems then helping distribute those products to users most likely to find them useful.

“I expect it to become a lot easier to ship new apps,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Meta plans to develop more ideas and use its recommendation technology to scale them to interested audiences.

Together, the initiatives suggest Meta sees enterprise AI as considerably broader than simply selling business agents, potentially encompassing software, APIs, computing infrastructure and tools originally developed for the company’s own operations.