Mark Zuckerberg predicts that billions of people will have personal AI agents in five years - TechCrunch

What the report says

TechCrunch reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the company’s quarterly earnings call to promote a five-year vision in which billions of people rely on personal AI agents. Zuckerberg said such assistants could understand users’ goals and work continuously across areas such as money management, health, relationships and home tasks. He also pointed to WhatsApp and Meta’s other messaging products as likely hubs for interacting with multiple AI agents, with WhatsApp already a major surface for Meta AI use.

The remarks come as Meta increases spending on AI infrastructure and agent-based products while trying to reassure investors that the investment can generate future revenue. TechCrunch noted that Meta’s business agents, expanded globally on WhatsApp and Messenger during the quarter, have been adopted by more than one million businesses. Zuckerberg described personal agents as a basis for future products and revenue lines.

Investor concern remains a key part of the story. According to TechCrunch, Meta’s shares fell nearly 10% after the earnings release. Reality Labs, the division behind AR glasses, VR headsets and related software, lost about $4.6 billion in the quarter, bringing cumulative losses to roughly $88 billion. Meta also reported free cash flow of $784 million, down from $8.55 billion in the comparable quarter a year earlier, a decline TechCrunch linked in part to AI infrastructure spending.

TechCrunch also cited Meta and BlackRock’s newly announced partnership to build a $14 billion data center in El Paso, Texas. The broader context is a technology industry race to build AI systems that can perform tasks on users’ behalf, with Google and Anthropic also pushing agent-like tools.