Meta unveiled its Business Agent at the Conversations 2026 conference in London, a tool designed to handle customer interactions for businesses across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
The company revealed that over one million businesses already use early versions of the agent which was built inside Meta’s messaging platforms, where over a billion conversations happen daily between people and businesses.
The Business Agent, which works in local languages, responds to customer questions without delay and also makes product suggestions from a company’s catalogue. It can book appointments, qualify incoming leads and complete sales.
Businesses can set the tone, and the agent adjusts its language to match.
At the event in London, demonstrations showed how quickly the agent replies to customer messages, with one test illustrating a full product enquiry handled from start to checkout without human input.
Meta also built in a morning briefing feature that sends business owners a summary of missed messages and highlights from customer chats. It is aimed at teams that cannot stay online all day.
The company is also expanding access with new businesses being able to set up the agent in minutes. The entry option is free, but Meta plans to introduce paid tiers later for different business sizes.
Discovery is also changing, letting customers search for businesses directly on WhatsApp soon. They can also share contact cards in chats as well as trigger direct conversations with companies and Meta says this will make response times faster once customers reach out.
Behind the tool is a larger system called the Meta Business Agent Platform. It allows companies to build and customise their own agents and also connects with external services such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee. This gives the agent the ability to act on behalf of a business across different systems.
Larger companies get added features including guardrails, measurement tools and options to set policies around customer interactions. Meta says this is aimed at ensuring consistency and oversight at scale.
The company is expanding support across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. It says businesses will eventually be able to use the system for more than customer service. Future plans include market research, product insights, calendar management and competitive tracking.
Meta is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure, with spending expected to reach $145 billion. The Business Agent aims to turn messaging platforms into full business tools.
OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are all building similar AI systems for enterprise use. Meta’s focus is strongly on integrating these tools directly into its social and messaging apps, where businesses already operate.
