Zuckerberg says AI agents will reach billions as Meta lifts spending
Meta’s CEO said personal AI agents could serve billions of users, while the company reported $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue.
By Rafael Ortiz · Fintech Correspondent
· 4 min read
Mark Zuckerberg used Meta’s second-quarter earnings call to argue that Zuckerberg AI agents will become a mainstream product for billions of people within five years. Meta said quarterly revenue rose 28% from a year earlier to $60.8 billion, giving the company a larger advertising base to fund heavy investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Zuckerberg told investors that it was “extremely unlikely” that billions of people would not have a personal agent within five years. He described software that understands a user’s aims and can work continuously across areas including health, finances, relationships and careers.
The comments put personal AI agents at the centre of Meta’s investment case. The company already reaches 3.6 billion daily users across its apps, according to the call, and Zuckerberg said Meta’s distribution could help it scale new AI products rapidly once they prove useful.
What are Meta personal AI agents?
A personal AI agent is software designed to act on a user’s behalf, rather than only answering individual prompts. In Meta’s framing, the agent would learn a user’s goals and perform tasks across Meta’s apps and services, subject to the product limits the company sets.
Zuckerberg said the main constraint is computing capacity. He told investors that there is “nowhere near enough compute for all the demand,” and said Meta has received offers to sell some of its own capacity at a premium. He said the company prefers to use that capacity to build AI products, where it sees better economics.
Meta said its Superintelligence Labs released Muse Spark 1.1 and Muse Image models during the quarter. The company also said usage of the Meta AI assistant has increased since its rebuild, though it did not give a specific daily interaction figure in the call summary.
Business agents are further advanced. Meta said more than one million businesses are using agents on WhatsApp and Messenger to answer customer questions and complete sales without direct human involvement. Zuckerberg cited Brazilian rental company Movida as an example, saying its WhatsApp agent can run a booking process from start to finish and resolve most conversations without human help.
How does Meta say it can win in AI agents?
Zuckerberg told investors that Meta’s advantage comes from distribution and feedback. He said that when the company has a format that works, it can scale that experience to billions of people, and that user activity can then improve the models behind the products.
He also acknowledged the size of the spending commitment. “I get that this is a big investment and it’s a big bet,” Zuckerberg said, adding that his view is that investors in the technology will be rewarded over time.
Meta’s advertising business remains the funding engine. The company reported advertising revenue of $59.4 billion, up 27% year over year. Ad impressions increased 14%, while the average price per ad rose 12%. Meta also said AI-driven ranking improvements lifted ad clicks and conversions, and that Advantage+ automated campaigns continued to expand as part of its ad delivery system.
The company reported capital expenditures of $31.1 billion for the quarter and free cash flow of $784 million. Meta ended the period with $90.3 billion in cash and marketable securities and $83.7 billion in debt. Headcount was about 75,000, down 3%, reflecting roughly 8,000 employees affected by a May reduction, according to Meta.
Meta also gave several operating updates. Instagram reached 2 billion daily active users, while Threads passed 500 million monthly active users. Zuckerberg said WhatsApp hit a record of 30 million messages per second during the World Cup final. Meta also launched Meta One, a subscription product with additional tools and AI features, and said every public Instagram Reels and Feed post is now processed through a large language model for attributes including topic and tone.
For the third quarter of 2026, Meta guided revenue of $61 billion to $64 billion. It projected full-year 2026 expenses of $165 billion to $169 billion and capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion, raising the lower end of its prior capex outlook. The company did not give a specific 2027 capital spending forecast.
This story draws on original reporting from PYMNTS.
