Zuckerberg Says Meta’s AI Agent Development Has Been Slower Than Expected

Meta Platforms Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s development of artificial intelligence agents has been progressing more slowly than expected.

Cointelegraph reported on July 3 that Zuckerberg made the remarks at an internal meeting that day. Reuters, which reviewed a transcript of the meeting, quoted him as saying the trajectory of agent development had not accelerated over the past four months in the way Meta had expected.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that expectations for agent adoption have yet to bear fruit. He added that Meta’s AI investment should begin producing results within the next three to six months. The company moved aggressively in January to build out agent infrastructure, after concerns it was not moving quickly enough.

Meta cut about 10% of its workforce in May and reassigned about 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams as part of a broader restructuring. Zuckerberg acknowledged management had misjudged the timing of that move.

The comments came the same day Meta globally launched Meta Business Agent, an AI agent service for businesses, across Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The service can respond to customer inquiries, recommend products and complete sales without human intervention.

The crypto industry has been watching AI agents as a potential key user of blockchain payments. Coinbase Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong and Circle Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire have predicted that AI agents will become major users of blockchain-based payments. In May, Amazon Web Services integrated Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol into its AI agent platform, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allowing agents to transact using the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC.

Actual on-chain activity, however, remains limited. According to blockchain data analytics platform Artemis, transaction volume through the AI agent-based x402 protocol totaled just $2 million over the past 30 days.