Mark Zuckerberg claims billions of people will have personal AI agents within 5 years; Meta is betting big on it

Silicon Valley is making a strong bet on AI tools—and AI agents in particular. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, believes that billions of people will soon have their own AI agents to perform tasks for them at any time. To stay at the forefront, he is willing to invest vast sums from Meta’s cash reserves.

To put this in context, an AI agent is more than just a simple chatbot. Agents can automate tasks and complete them in the background, even when the user is not present.

“I think it is highly unlikely—looking five years out, for example, or whatever time frame you choose—that there won’t be billions of people with a personal agent that understands their goals and works on their behalf 24/7 to achieve them in whatever area interests them,” Mark Zuckerberg stated during Meta’s latest earnings call.

He asserted that personal agents would form “the foundation of our next wave of products and revenue streams in the months and years ahead.”

Meta joins Google in seeing its cash flow impacted

However, creating AI agents is not cheap. Just as with large language models (LLMs), companies must invest billions of dollars in AI agents. This investment has impacted Meta’s cash reserves; according to the latest earnings report, the company has seen a significant drop in free cash flow due to heavy, ongoing investment in AI.

Meta’s free cash flow for the second quarter fell 91%, dropping to $784 million from $8.55 billion the previous year; This marks the lowest figure since 2022. Free cash flow is essentially the cash a company has left after paying operating expenses and investing in long-term assets, such as buildings and infrastructure.

In other words, over the course of a year, Meta has spent nearly $8 billion more than it has brought in, as part of its investment plans. At the same time, the company raised the lower end of its capital expenditure forecast for 2026 from $125 billion to $130 billion. Its shares fell by approximately 10% following the release of the results.

However, Mark Zuckerberg is not the only one willing to make massive investments in AI. Google recently confirmed that it had recorded negative cash flow for the first time in 22 years. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion for the second quarter, as it continues to spend more than it earns.

Companies like Meta and Google are likely to continue burning through their cash reserves to gain an edge in the AI race.

Meta’s CEO explained that while the company had plans to lease computing capacity to customers for running AI models, there was “significantly higher margin in selling intelligence than in directly selling computing capacity.”

Reportedly, Meta plans to double its total computing power to 7 gigawatts this year and reach 14 gigawatts next year. The company currently has 32 data centres either in operation or under construction.

WhatsApp will become increasingly important in the era of AI agents

This year, Meta launched the new Muse family of AI models, which includes Muse Spark 1.1 and Muse Image. These models were developed in less than a year by Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) under the leadership of Alexandr Wang.

However, Mark Zuckerberg explained that messaging apps will continue to play a pivotal role regarding AI agents, likely becoming the primary platform for interacting with them.

Meta’s CEO added: “As we move toward a future where we all interact with multiple agents, I believe WhatsApp and our other messaging platforms will become increasingly important.” Zuckerberg noted that WhatsApp is the most important platform for Meta AI, although Instagram is expected to incorporate new features soon.

Meta also faces costs that extend beyond AI infrastructure. Its Reality Labs division—responsible for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) products—posted losses of approximately $4.6 billion for the quarter and has accumulated over $80 billion in operating losses since 2021. Additionally, the company has recorded severance costs following the layoff of nearly 10% of its workforce—about 8,000 employees—in May of this year.