Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that the company’s AI agent development is moving slower than expected, signaling that one of Meta’s biggest artificial intelligence pushes has yet to deliver at the pace executives wanted.
Zuckerberg made the comments during an internal town hall on Thursday, according to Reuters.
Meta’s AI agent push falls short of expectations
Zuckerberg said Meta’s work on AI agents over the past four months had not “accelerated in the way we expected.”
For Meta, the slower progress matters because the company has been trying to make AI a deeper part of its core products, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and its advertising tools. The effort is also tied to heavy spending on computing infrastructure, model development and new AI-focused teams.
Zuckerberg told employees he expected Meta to see more meaningful progress from its AI work over the next three to six months, suggesting the company is not pulling back from the strategy even as early results come in below internal expectations.
Earlier AI overhaul exposed internal strain
The town hall comments followed an earlier admission that the company had made mistakes in its rapid shift toward an AI-centered workforce.
In an internal memo, Zuckerberg said Meta was trying to bring more stability to employees after a May restructuring that cut 10% of its global workforce and moved about 8,000 workers into AI-related initiatives.
“Given the complexity of these changes, we’ve made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” Zuckerberg said in the memo, while adding that he was focused on providing employees “as much stability as possible.”
He also said he did not want to overpromise because the world was changing in ways outside Meta’s control, while reiterating that the company did not expect more company-wide layoffs this year.
AI spending faces a harder test
The comments underscore the challenge facing Meta as it works to turn its AI overhaul into products that can scale, while its fast-moving restructuring continues to show signs of uneven execution.
For investors, employees and users, the next test is whether Meta can move its AI agent work beyond slower-than-expected development and deliver visible improvements across its apps before questions grow louder over the return on its AI spending.
