Overview
- Meta announced on Wednesday the global launch of Meta Business Agent, an AI assistant that can answer customer questions, recommend products, book appointments, qualify leads and close sales across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
- The company said the tool will be free at first with paid subscription tiers for small businesses and consumption‑based pricing for large enterprises coming in the coming months.
- Meta also released a Business Agent Platform that links agents to hundreds of external systems such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee so agents can take actions on a company’s behalf while enforcing enterprise controls and guardrails.
- As part of a restructuring, Meta created an Enterprise Solutions team to embed engineering squads with customers to deploy and customize agents, but the company is investigating a recent security lapse where hackers tricked a support chatbot into handing over access because of a flawed technical check.
- The launch is aimed at diversifying revenue as Meta faces very large data‑center and AI capital spending; some analysts see billions in potential subscription revenue while regulators and privacy battles in Europe and operational risks remain key obstacles.