AI agent development hasn’t accelerated as expected, says Zuckerberg

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI agent development at the firm is progressing more slowly than expected, even as technology and crypto firms continue pouring resources into the nascent technology.

In a company meeting on Thursday, Zuckerberg said the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” according to Reuters, which reviewed a recording of the call.

The bet on agent adoption hasn’t “come to fruition yet,” Zuckerberg said, adding that executives made an aggressive push into agentic infrastructure in January in part because of fears they weren’t moving “fast enough.”

Despite the slower progress, Zuckerberg said he expects the firm’s AI investments to start paying off within the next three to six months.

Zuckerberg’s comments offer a reality check for technology and crypto firms betting that autonomous agents will soon become major users of blockchain payments. Meta, along with several crypto firms, has bet big on agentic AI, with many pivoting their business models to cater to autonomous AI agents.

In May, Meta cut roughly 10% of its workforce and reassigned about 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams — a restructuring Zuckerberg acknowledged was not as clean as it could have been, with executives miscalculating the timing.

Meta expands AI agent feature on three platforms

Zuckerberg’s concerns come as Meta expanded its Meta Business Agent globally for businesses on Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp on Thursday.

The Business Agent can respond to customer inquiries, make product recommendations and close sales without human intervention, Meta said.

Zuckerberg also revealed in March that he was building a personal AI agent designed to support his decision-making as CEO.

The crypto industry has been a keen adopter of the technology, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire among the executives predicting that AI agents will become the dominant users of blockchain-based payments in the coming years.

Several notable integrations advancing AI agent-driven stablecoin spending have emerged in recent months, including one by Amazon Web Services in May, when it integrated Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allowing agents to transact in the $USDC ($USDC) stablecoin.

Related: OKX launches AI marketplace for autonomous agent economy

In April, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card for AI agents to make online purchases in USDt (USDT) on behalf of businesses.

AI agent payments adoption lagging

Despite the integrations, data shows that AI-agent transaction activity on the blockchain remains relatively small, with Artemis data showing that only $2 million in trading volume has been facilitated through the AI agent-supported x402 protocol over the past 30 days.

Monthly change in x402 transaction volume over the past 12 months. Source: Artemis