The race for enterprise AI supremacy just got a lot more competitive, as Meta has revealed Business Agent, an agentic solution that looks to help businesses of all sizes increase output. It also revealed a platform for building and deploying agents, and this move is a bold pivot by the company as it aims to take on the likes of Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Introducing Meta Business Agent
In a pivot from the company’s social networking roots, Meta has announced Business Agent, which aims to help companies automate daily operations and drastically increase output. According to Meta, businesses can set it up in minutes, and it plugs right into existing enterprise infrastructure.
Over a million businesses are already using Meta Business Agent on WhatsApp and Messenger to respond to customers at any time, and Meta is now expanding the tool to businesses of all shapes and sizes globally. Getting started is free, and in the coming months there will be paid subscription offerings, with options for all types of businesses.
What Business Agent Can Do
When using Business Agent, it can help you boost your communication and personalization efforts with customers, as it answers specific questions about your business and makes product recommendations from your catalog.
This is a very useful feature for companies to have in place, as it’s projected that most brands may be using agentic AI interactions by 2028. As a result, having agentic AI in place earlier may give you a leg up on your competition and ensure you’re familiar with how it works before it becomes the standard.
Business Agent also books appointments, qualifies incoming leads, lets you choose when a human needs to jump in for support, and can even close sales. The ability to close sales is an especially important capability, as agentic AI is expected to take a major share of online sales in the coming years.
Also, because Business Agent fields questions and responds to customers, it can also give you a morning brief to help you catch up on everything that happened while you were away.
Build, Customize, and Deploy Agents With Meta Business Agent Platform
In addition to Business Agent itself, the company also revealed the Meta Business Agent Platform. This is an agentic platform that gives businesses the ability and infrastructure to build, customize, and deploy their own agents at scale.
It also lets companies connect to a suite of hundreds of systems (such as Shopify and Zendesk), giving agents the option to take action on behalf of the business. The platform also aims to offer larger businesses plenty of controls, guardrails, and measurement so they can define the rules these agents abide by.
Our Take
Meta Joining In On the Enterprise Battle
There’s no doubt that this move shows that Meta is joining the enterprise AI battle, which already features major companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Despite how different the move may seem for Meta, it makes sense, as there’s a major transition to agentic enterprise taking place, and Meta wants a piece of the pie.
Only time will tell who comes out on top in this competition and who takes a back seat. However, a company of Meta’s size and the deep financial resources it has could certainly make it a major player in the enterprise AI market as the industry continues to grow and mature.
Also, Meta’s massive global reach through its apps like Facebook and Instagram may give it a distribution advantage over these other platforms that may not be able to reach as many people and businesses.
