Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told investors during Meta’s second-quarter earnings call that he expects billions of people to have personal AI agents working on their behalf 24/7 within five years, citing uses for finances, health, interpersonal relationships, and household management. He said WhatsApp, already the leading platform where users interact with Meta AI, would become increasingly central to the company’s agent strategy. Meta’s stock fell nearly 10% following the earnings release. Reality Labs, the division responsible for AR glasses and VR headsets, lost approximately $4.6 billion in the quarter, part of a running total of around $88 billion in losses since 2021. Free cash flow dropped 91% year-on-year to $784 million, driven by AI infrastructure investment. Last week Meta and BlackRock announced a partnership to build a $14 billion data centre in El Paso, Texas. Meta’s business AI agents, rolled out globally on WhatsApp and Messenger in the quarter, have been adopted by more than one million businesses.