Meta has unveiled an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, or agent, that runs on social network services (SNS) and messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram. The strategy aims to transform its SNS advertising-centered business structure into a corporate customer (B2B) business to catch up with frontrunners such as Google.
Meta announced on Wednesday local time that it would launch "Meta Business Agent," an enterprise AI agent designed to help companies boost productivity and provide personalized experiences to customers. Meta said, "The agent can be installed in minutes and integrated directly into corporate infrastructure to improve productivity by 10 times or even 100 times."
The agent can run not only on WhatsApp and Messenger, Meta's flagship messaging apps, but also on Instagram, the SNS platform, to handle customer consultations, product recommendations and reservations. The service is included in "Meta One," a subscription service for businesses and creators that Meta unveiled last week.
The Meta platform boasts mass popularity, with 2 billion people accessing Facebook, its flagship service, every day. Meta conceived its enterprise agent business by noting that its SNS and messaging services are used not only for private conversations but also as communication channels at companies. Meta explained that more than 1 billion business-related conversations take place daily across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, and that more than 1 million companies are already running early versions of Meta Business Agent to handle customer service around the clock.
Meta relies on advertising for 98% of its revenue, meaning its profit-generating business is concentrated on individual SNS customers. Advertising has been the core revenue source supporting Meta, but it has faced a crisis since the emergence of AI chatbots. If the use of Meta Business Agent spreads, centered on small and medium-sized enterprises, the company could diversify its revenue sources and move away from a business structure dependent on individual customers.
In particular, Meta's move is a choice aimed at catching up with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, which are engaged in a fierce contest in the enterprise AI market. This is because competition to secure corporate customers has unfolded as Claude Cowork, an enterprise agent launched by Anthropic in January this year, and Claude Code, a coding tool, gained explosive popularity. Microsoft (MS) also joined the competition by unveiling agent tools the previous day.
