Mark Zuckerberg predicts billions of people will use personal AI agents within five years, as Meta invests heavily in technology designed to manage tasks across everyday life.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg believes billions of people will have personal artificial intelligence agents within the next five years, as the company pushes AI systems beyond chatbots towards digital assistants that can act on users’ behalf.
Speaking during Meta’s quarterly earnings call, Zuckerberg said he expects AI agents to become a normal part of daily life, helping people manage areas including finances, health, relationships and household tasks.
The tech boss said: “I think that it’s extremely unlikely if you look out five years from now that you don’t have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals and that is just working on your behalf 24/7 to achieve your goals in whatever the domain is that you care about.”
Zuckerberg added that messaging platforms such as WhatsApp could become increasingly important as people begin interacting with multiple AI agents.
WhatsApp is already the main platform where users engage with Meta AI, the company’s consumer assistant.
Meta is competing with rivals including Google and Anthropic, which are also developing AI agents capable of completing tasks rather than simply answering questions.
Google has highlighted custom AI agents as part of its search strategy, while Anthropic’s Claude Code assistant has attracted significant interest from software developers.
However, investors remain cautious about Meta’s aggressive AI spending. The company’s shares fell almost 10 per cent following its latest earnings report, with concerns over the cost of building AI infrastructure and uncertainty over when new products will generate revenue.
Meta reported free cash flow of $784 million for the quarter, down sharply from $8.55 billion a year earlier. The decline has been linked to increased investment in AI infrastructure, including major data centre projects.
Meta and BlackRock recently announced a partnership to build a $14 billion data centre in Texas.
Zuckerberg argued that selling AI-powered services could eventually become more profitable than simply providing computing power.
He said: “We believe that there will continue to be a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly.”
Meta has already launched AI business agents on WhatsApp and Messenger, with more than one million companies adopting the tools globally.
The company hopes consumer AI agents will eventually become a major part of its next generation of products and revenue streams.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expects billions of people to have AI agents in next five years
