Meta Launches Its Business AI on WhatsApp and Instagram

Meta Generalizes Its Business AI Agent Across Its Messaging Platforms

Conversational agents are gradually establishing themselves as the norm for online customer service, and Meta is aligning with this trend. At its Conversations conference held in London on June 3, 2026, Meta announced the global rollout of its Business AI agent. This tool, tested for nearly two years in markets like Mexico, is designed to enable businesses to continuously respond to customer inquiries via WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

According to Meta, over one million businesses are already relying on this agent on WhatsApp and Messenger. Every day, one billion people interact with businesses through these platforms. The Business agent is now globally accessible and can be set up in just a few minutes to respond in the local language while maintaining the brand's tone. It is capable of handling various tasks: answering company-specific questions, recommending products from a catalog, scheduling appointments, qualifying incoming leads, and closing sales. Businesses also have the option to decide when a team member should step in.

The Business agent is presented as a way for companies of any size to be reachable at all times, "as if they had an infinite team," emphasizes Meta. Its use is free to start, but paid offerings are planned for the coming months.

Advanced Features for Businesses

In addition to managing customer interactions, the Business agent also serves as an internal assistant for the company. It can provide a morning brief summarizing messages received overnight and deliver insights on discussion threads. This feature is currently being tested with a limited number of businesses on the WhatsApp Business app, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite. Meta plans to expand its capabilities to include market research, product statistics analysis, and integration with calendar and competitive monitoring tools.

Meta has also launched a platform to create, customize, and deploy these agents at scale. It allows the agent to connect to several hundred systems, including Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee, thus facilitating its integration into business operations. Control tools and safeguards are built in for large enterprises, allowing them to set rules directly within the messaging platforms used by customers.

A B2B Strategy and an Evolving Business Model

This initiative is part of Meta's strategy to consolidate its own assistants. Since January 15, 2026, Meta AI has been the only conversational agent authorized on WhatsApp, replacing third-party chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Regarding the business model, the Business agent is currently free, but Meta plans to launch paid subscriptions in the coming months. These subscriptions will be tailored to businesses of all sizes, with billing based on the number of tokens consumed for large accounts, particularly in certain offerings of WhatsApp Business Premium.