Mark Zuckerberg says in 5 years billions will have personal AI agents, he is betting big Meta money on it

Mark Zuckerberg predicts that soon billions of people will have their personal AI agents working around the clock. He is so confident that he is pouring billions of dollars from Meta's reserves into AI.Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions of dollars into AI agents. (Photo: Reuters)Silicon Valley is going all-in on AI tools, and in particular AI agents. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, believes that soon billions of people will have their own AI agents who do their work around the clock. And to stay ahead, he is ready to burn Meta’s cash reserves.To give you some context, an AI agent is more than just a chatbot. Agents can automate tasks for you and complete them in the background, even when you are away.“I think that it’s extremely unlikely if you look out five years from now, for example – whatever period of time you want – that you don’t have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals and that is just working on your behalf 24/7 to achieve your goals in whatever the domain is that you care about,” Mark Zuckerberg said during Meta’s latest earnings call. He claimed that personal agents would be ‘the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead’.Meta joins Google in taking a hit on cash flowBut creating AI agents is not cheap. As is the case with large language models (LLMs), companies need to pour billions of dollars on AI agents too. So much so, that Meta’s cash reserves have taken a hit. As per the company’s latest earnings report, the company has seen a major fall in free cash flow as it continues to invest heavily into AI. Meta’s free cash flow in the second quarter fell 91 per cent to $784 million from $8.55 billion a year earlier, and the lowest since 2022. Free cash flow is essentially the cash a company has left after paying its operating expenses and investing in long-term assets such as buildings, and infrastructure.That is, in one year, Meta has spent almost $8 billion more than what it makes as part of its investment plans. At the same time, the company raised the lower end of its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $130 billion from $125 billion. Its shares fell about 10 per cent after the results. Mark Zuckerberg is not the only one who is willing to spend big on AI though. Recently, Google confirmed that it had turned cash negative for the first time in 22 years. Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion in the second quarter, as it continues to spend more than it makes.It is likely that companies like Meta and Google will continue to burn cash reserves to gain an upper hand in the AI race.The Meta CEO explained that while Meta had plans to rent out compute to customers to run AI models, there was “a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly.”As per reports, Meta plans to double its overall computing power to 7 gigawatts this year and then to 14 gigawatts next year. The company currently has 32 data centres in operation or under construction.WhatsApp to become more important in AI agent eraThis year, Meta has released a new Muse family of AI models, including Muse Spark 1.1, and Muse Image. The models were developed in less than a year by the Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), led by Alexandr Wang. But Mark Zuckerberg explained that messaging apps will continue to play an important role when it comes to AI agents, likely as the go-to-platform for you to interact with your agent.The Meta CEO added, “As we move toward a future where we’re all interacting with multiple agents, I think that WhatsApp and our other messaging surfaces are going to become increasingly important.” Zuckerberg stated that WhatsApp was the biggest platform for Meta AI. Though Instagram is expected to get more features soon.Meta is also carrying costs beyond AI infrastructure. Its Reality Labs division, which oversees its AR and VR products, lost about $4.6 billion in the quarter and has posted more than $80 billion in operating losses since 2021. The company has also booked severance expenses after laying off about 10 per cent of its workforce, or around 8,000 employees, in May this year.- EndsPublished By: Armaan AgarwalPublished On: Jul 30, 2026 08:37 IST