Meta has spent two decades as a company that makes money almost entirely from advertising. On its most recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that is about to change. Meta wants to sell AI agents, developer tools, and its own computing power straight to businesses, building a second income stream that does not depend on ad clicks.
This is not a distant plan. Meta already rolled out its Business Agent worldwide across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, letting any business hand off customer questions and sales conversations to an AI assistant around the clock. More than a million businesses were using early versions before the global rollout even happened.
Starting in August, the way businesses pay for it changes too. Instead of a flat fee per message, larger businesses get billed by how much text the AI processes, at roughly a few cents per conversation. If your business already talks to customers over WhatsApp, this bill is coming whether you asked for it or not.
The more interesting part of Zuckerberg's comments is the plan to sell computing power directly. Meta has been spending well over 100 billion dollars a year building data centers and buying chips, mostly to train its own AI models. Now it wants to rent out the spare capacity to outside companies.
That puts Meta up against Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in the cloud computing business those three have controlled for years. If Meta can undercut them on price, even by a little, it becomes a real option for any company shopping for AI infrastructure, not just an advertising partner.
The timing tells you why this matters so much to Meta. The company's profit took a hit this quarter as spending on AI outpaced the money coming in, and investors reacted badly. Selling agents and compute is not a side project, it is Meta trying to turn its biggest expense into a second business before the spending becomes a problem it cannot spend its way out of.
Meta is also late to this particular party. Salesforce, Microsoft, and Google already have AI agent products sold to businesses, with real customers and real revenue behind them. Zuckerberg himself admitted that selling to big companies is a different skill than running an ad auction that millions of small businesses use without ever talking to a salesperson.
What this means for you depends on where you sit. If you already advertise or message customers through Meta's apps, expect to see AI tools and new charges show up automatically. If you buy cloud computing or AI services for a larger business, watch for Meta to show up as a cheaper option within the next year, not just a place to run ads.