Meta plans to launch agentic shopping tools and new AI models in the coming months as it leverages user data to personalize commerce.
Mark Zuckerberg said on a recent earnings call:
“In 2025, we rebuilt the foundations of our AI program. Over the coming months, we’re going to start shipping our new models and products… and I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the new year. This also has implications for commerce. New agentic shopping tools will allow people to find just the right set of products from the businesses in our catalog.”
He later added:
“We’re starting to see the promise of AI that understands our personal context, including our history, our interests, our content and our relationships. A lot of what makes agents valuable is the unique context that they can see, and we believe that Meta will be able to provide a uniquely personal experience.”
Investors have previously criticized Meta for failing to clearly state how its massive AI investments will translate to the company's bottom line, but Zuckerberg made it clear on the call that the AI lab's work would reach the public soon. However on the same call, he projected that 2026 capital expenditures will rise to between $115B and $135B, marking a sizable increase from the $72B Meta spent in 2025.
It was also noted on the call that Meta's recent acquisition of Manus is expected to play a big role in its social and AI commerce goals over the next few years, as the company plans to integrate the service into its products. As a reminder, Manus AI agents receive data from third-party digital data companies for breakdowns of consumer activity and campaign effectiveness, which could help Meta give advertisers clearer attribution, tighter targeting, and closed-loop measurement across its apps.
Why does Meta think it can do well at commerce now?
It's failed at every other attempt, other than Facebook Marketplace, which is more of a Craigslist-style forum as opposed to a true commerce experience. This announcement feels like a monkey-see, monkey-do attempt at playing catch up with OpenAI's agentic commerce ambitions and an attempt at placating investor skepticism about how / when Meta's AI investments will pay off.
When it comes to commerce, Facebook has never succeeded in its attempts to own the entire experience. It should instead focus on building ad formats and AI answers that build on its vast trove of user data to offer better / more personalized product discovery, leaving the checkout to partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, PayPal, and Stripe — on their platforms.
While other AI companies build closed ecosystems inside pay-to-play walled gardens, Meta should focus on building an open ecosystem that excels at personalization and discovery — which is what it does best. But it won't.
