Meta is launching AI agents for WhatsApp business users that will be able to respond to customers on companies’ behalf. The corporation is trying to open a major new revenue stream for the world’s most popular messaging app.
It is one of Meta’s first attempts to commercialize the results of its latest multibillion-dollar bet on artificial intelligence beyond its core advertising business.
The new Business Agent tool is beginning a global rollout after being tested in several markets in recent months. It will be able to automatically respond to customer messages, give business owners feedback and analytical suggestions, and in some cases complete sales or book appointments without human involvement. The feature will soon also appear in Instagram messages.
“A couple of years ago, I said that every business would have an AI agent—just as you have email, a website and a social media account,” Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a video address at the company’s presentation in London on Wednesday. “And this is happening faster than I expected.”
Over the past year, Zuckerberg has rebuilt the AI strategy of Facebook’s parent company, pouring large sums into recruiting top specialists from rivals including OpenAI and Google. That push culminated in the release of the Muse Spark model in April.
Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp, told the Financial Times that Business Agent would “dramatically accelerate the paid messaging business.” She said the platform uses a combination of in-house and external AI models, including Muse Spark.
WhatsApp, which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19 billion, has more than 3 billion regular users and remains one of Meta’s most popular but least commercialized products. WhatsApp’s long-standing privacy guarantees have forced the company to look for business models not directly tied to advertising.
Revenue from companies that pay to use WhatsApp to communicate with customers exceeded an annualized pace of $2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025. That is still only a small share of Meta’s total revenue, which reached $200 billion last year.
“With paid messaging, we were already helping businesses communicate with customers,” Newton-Rex said. “Now it is about accelerating that process and making it scalable.”
Many companies already use a separate WhatsApp app to handle customer inquiries manually, and small businesses can mostly do so for free. Now small companies will have to pay a monthly subscription if they want AI systems to respond on their behalf.
Large companies will pay depending on the number and complexity of AI agents’ interactions with customers. This comes as many technology giants are moving from unlimited use of AI tools to access-based pricing, trying to make money from popular services that are expensive to run.
Unlike conversations between ordinary users, interactions with WhatsApp AI agents will not be protected by end-to-end encryption. That means both Meta and business owners will be able to read such messages, and the data itself, Newton-Rex said, could “potentially” be used to train AI.