Meta's AI to Charge Based on Business Results

Mark Zuckerberg told investors on Wednesday that Meta's enterprise AI plans go well past the customer-service agent the company launched in June. On the second-quarter earnings call, the Meta CEO laid out a broader pitch: APIs, business agents, compute sales, and other services built for large customers. The goal is a new revenue line that doesn't depend on advertising, which still generates most of Meta's money, or subscriptions, which bring in far less.

The near-term plan starts with familiar territory. Meta wants to sell AI agents to the advertisers and small businesses already running campaigns on its platforms, letting those companies field customer interactions through messaging apps rather than employees. Zuckerberg framed the pricing model as an extension of how Meta already charges for ads: get paid based on outcomes for the business, not just placement.

Beyond that base, Zuckerberg pointed to a second tier of customers Meta hasn't historically served this way. He described plans to open up internal tools, including systems Meta built for its own coding and development work, to outside enterprise clients. That's where he picked up the thread on what those tools might look like in practice.