Meta launches enterprise-focused AI ‘business agent’ to automate daily operations

[LONDON] Meta Platforms on Wednesday (Jun 3) unveiled an artificial intelligence agent aimed at helping businesses carry out day-to-day operations, positioning the social media giant as a player in the enterprise AI market.

Announced at the company’s WhatsApp-focused Conversations conference in London, the new product expands on existing business messaging services.

It enables “agentic” capabilities, in which the assistant can take actions such as booking calendar appointments and closing sales on behalf of businesses.

The company said more than one million businesses were already using earlier chatbot versions of such agents on WhatsApp and Messenger.

The new version will be added to Instagram as well. It will be rolled out globally to businesses of all sizes.

The move hints at Meta’s ambitions to compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google in the market for enterprise applications of its AI tools.

It will do so by leveraging the reach of its WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook apps.

The Business Agent can be customised to respond to queries on those apps, channelling a company’s tone and handling tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, qualifying leads and escalating complex queries to human staff when needed.

Businesses will initially be able to access the tool for free, with paid subscription options planned in the coming months.

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“This is definitely an enterprise play,” Naomi Gleit, Meta’s head of product, told Reuters. “We actually want to take actions now.”

She added that the company wants to “be able to complete the payment, to process the booking, to place the order”, which goes beyond “rule-based automations” for legacy bots.

Gleit is spearheading the company’s efforts to expand into new lines of business around AI agents, including with a new team, Enterprise Solutions.

The team was announced as part of a recent companywide restructuring around AI.

Alongside offerings inside Meta’s apps, the company is also rolling out a broader “Business Agent Platform” aimed at giving businesses the infrastructure to build custom AI agents to help them manage their operations elsewhere.

The platform is connected to hundreds of non-Meta systems such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, in which those agents can be deployed, the company said.

It provides larger businesses with enterprise-grade controls, guardrails and measurement, Meta added.

Gleit is spearheading the company’s efforts to expand into new lines of business around AI agents, including with a new team, Enterprise Solutions, which was announced as part of a recent companywide restructuring around AI.

The team will send squads of forward-deployed engineers to embed with enterprise customers in a model that is used by AI companies such as Anthropic.

This is aimed at navigating internal politics around AI adoption and writing custom code to help models deliver results.

Its scope is currently focused on new business agents, but it is also working to build and sell agentic AI products that businesses can use for additional internal functions.

Gleit is also working to consolidate the different AI agents Meta has built, including internal workflow-oriented tooling, a user-facing Meta AI support bot and a separate ads-focused “business assistant” launched globally last month, she said.

“The number one thing I hear, especially from small businesses, is ‘I just want to go to one place that can do all the things’,” she said.

“You want to make things modular, and you also need to be willing to evolve, because the technology is moving so quickly.” REUTERS