Meta Launches Business Agent for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram in Push to Diversify Beyond Ads

Meta unveiled a new AI-powered tool for businesses on Wednesday, introducing Meta Business Agent as a subscription feature designed to handle customer interactions across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram — the company's latest effort to reduce its near-total reliance on advertising revenue.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement during a company event in London, describing the tool as a way to give businesses of any size an always-available agent capable of responding to customer inquiries, recommending products, and booking appointments.

"Today, I want to introduce Meta Business Agent, giving every business, of any size, an agent to talk to customers and help run your operation," Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks. "Now, a clothing shop in Birmingham or a bakery in São Paulo can offer the same always-on, highly-personalized experience as a major brand."

Meta Business Agent will be bundled into Meta One, a business-focused subscription tier the company introduced last week as a package for premium services aimed at creators and companies. Meta said last week it would also begin testing subscription services for its Meta AI app and website.

Advertising currently accounts for roughly 98% of Meta's revenue, a dependency the company has long sought to address. Past efforts to sell physical and digital products to consumers and businesses have yielded limited results.

Large businesses that already use Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform will be billed for the new agent on a consumption basis — the same model used to charge for messages sent to customers through the platform.

Meta also announced a companion Meta Business Agent Platform that enables companies to connect third-party data sources from services including Shopify and Zendesk, allowing businesses to "offer personalized experiences, starting within the messaging apps their customers already use," the company said.

Zuckerberg said Meta is currently developing more advanced agentic capabilities, including features for "suggesting ways to grow your business, giving you competitive intelligence and real-time insights into what's working and what's not." He said the agent would eventually take on a broader operational role as the underlying models improve.

The launch follows a limited free test of a precursor service, then called Business AI, that Meta rolled out in October — available only in select markets, including Mexico and India.

Meta is entering a crowded field. Amazon and Microsoft have both released agent tools for enterprise customers in recent months. The AI agent space has drawn significant commercial attention as companies race to embed autonomous software into business workflows.

Zuckerberg has positioned AI as central to Meta's long-term competitive ambitions, citing rivalries with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the development of frontier models and AI services. Meta Business Agent represents the most direct commercial expression of that strategy to date, translating model development into a subscription product aimed squarely at small and mid-sized businesses.

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