Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook parent Meta, said this week he sees agentic shopping as an opportunity, but there was no indication Facebook will morph into an Amazon or eBay, and he only hinted as to what was to come.
During the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg told analysts:
“New agentic shopping tools will allow people to find just the right very specific set of products from the businesses in our catalogue.”
Meta competes in ecommerce – Facebook Marketplace started as a glorified classifieds site, but even with the launch of Facebook Shops in May of 2020, it’s not seen as a marketplace the way eBay, Amazon, and Etsy are seen. Like many companies, it focuses on ad revenue – it generated a whopping $58 billion in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Meta’s CEO was clear about the importance of AI in monetization, answering a Wall Street analyst’s question with the following response:
“We have been working on Meta AI for a while. I think you’re starting to see some of the way that products like that get monetized across the industry when we get that to a scale and depth that we want. We think that there are going to be opportunities, both in terms of subscriptions and advertising and all of the different things that you see on that.
“And I mean yes, I think — there’s a number of things on shopping and commerce that I’m quite excited about that I alluded to in the comments upfront. And as the models launch and we demonstrate some of the capabilities, both in the first set of models and over the year, I think the models are going to be a lot better, too.”
To demonstrate one way Facebook could monetize agentic shopping beyond advertising, consider this: The Information reported that Shopify merchants will have to pay a 4% “Agentic Storefronts Fee” to OpenAI for any sales they make through ChatGPT’s checkout feature.
The potential of Facebook doing something similar clearly whetted the appetite of analysts covering the company, with one asking that very question:
“Do you anticipate as people adopt agentic products that you will charge a fee from your commerce partners to use them or will they be free? So, I’m trying to figure out how you monetize all those great agentic tools you’re going to get.”
Here is how Chad Heaton, Facebook (Meta)’s Vice President of Finance, responded to the analyst’s question:
“On the commerce question, I guess I’d first just note that commerce continues to be a big area of focus for our teams. Today, we already offer tools to help businesses connect with shoppers and boost sales through our ads products, including through our AI-powered Advantage Plus shopping campaigns.
“We’re investing in new product experiences to make it easier for people to discover and buy new products across our apps.
“But I think part of your question was also just around how we’re going to go about monetizing these new AI revenue streams. And this is just an area we’re going to be exploring. We’re going to be looking at subscriptions for high-value AI features. One feature of that will be Manus, as we’ve talked about. We intend to continue to scale its existing subscription offering to many more businesses.
“We’ll also integrate it into our products and bring a leading agent to billions of people. The other thread here is business messaging, where we’re starting to see traction with the business AIs we’ve made available in Mexico and the Philippines. We’ve seen over 1 million weekly conversations between people and business AIs now happening.
“So, these are just some of the areas that we’re starting to explore, but I think there’s a lot of opportunities both across commerce, agentic commerce, and then some of these new revenue streams that we’re looking into.”
The takeaway from TechCrunch: “Both Google and OpenAI have built platforms for agent-enabled transactions, with companies like Stripe and Uber signed on as partners. But while other AI labs have already built significant technical infrastructure, Meta believes its access to personal data will prove uniquely valuable.”
Meta recently acquired AI startup Manus for approximately $2 billion, and on Monday, two days before the earnings call, TechCrunch wrote about Meta’s plans to test premium subscriptions on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
