Mark Zuckerberg says AI agent development at Meta is taking longer than anticipated. Speaking at a company meeting Thursday, he told staff the “trajectory of agentic development” over the last four months hasn’t accelerated the way executives expected.
The bet on AI agents hasn’t “come to fruition yet,” Zuckerberg said. Meta made an aggressive push into agentic infrastructure back in January — partly because leadership worried they weren’t moving fast enough. That same day, Meta rolled out its Meta Business Agent globally on Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. The AI handles customer inquiries, product recommendations, and sales without human involvement.
Still, Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI investments to start paying off within three to six months.
This is a reality check for the crypto industry too. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire have both predicted AI agents will become the dominant users of blockchain payments. Amazon Web Services integrated Coinbase’s x402 protocol in May, letting agents spend USDC. OKX launched an AI marketplace. Oobit rolled out Visa cards for AI agents spending USDT.
But the numbers tell a different story. Over the past 30 days, only $2 million in trading volume went through the x402 protocol. That’s tiny.
In May, Meta cut roughly 10% of its workforce and shifted 7,000 employees to AI teams. Zuckerberg acknowledged the restructuring wasn’t as clean as it should have been. Executives miscalculated the timing.
