Meta Wavers: "AI Agent Development Lags Behind Expectations"

Zuckerberg: "No Results Yet"

Associated Press Yonhap News Agency

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, has acknowledged that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) agents is progressing more slowly than originally anticipated. Analysts have pointed out that the large-scale investments and restructuring initiatives aimed at accelerating AI development have not yielded the significant profits that were expected.

According to foreign media outlets such as TechCrunch on July 2 (local time), CEO Zuckerberg stated during an internal town hall meeting that "at least over the past four months, the development of AI agents does not seem to have accelerated in the way we had anticipated," and added, "the company's bet on the new structure has yet to bear fruit." He went on to say, "We expect to begin seeing greater benefits from our AI investments in the next three to six months."

CEO Zuckerberg further explained, "Back in January and February, when we were drawing up restructuring plans, the top management was gripped by a sense of crisis that the company could not keep up with the pace of change," adding, "At the time, we were quite optimistic about the advancements in tools such as Anthropic's Claude code, used by our competitors." Regarding the large-scale restructuring carried out in May, he pointed out, "the process did not proceed smoothly." He admitted that while the company had taken extreme measures to avoid falling behind in its AI strategy, the results have not met expectations.

These remarks came immediately after Meta announced its plans to enter the cloud business by selling its surplus AI computing resources to external companies. This announcement has fueled the controversy over excessive AI investments and led to a decline in leading AI-related stocks.

In May, Meta announced layoffs affecting 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its entire workforce, and revealed plans to invest up to $145 billion (about 222 trillion won) in AI infrastructure, including AI data centers and semiconductors. This amount accounts for a significant portion of the total AI investment by all major big tech companies, which exceeds $700 billion.

Despite the large-scale layoffs and investments, concerns among investors are expected to grow as CEO Zuckerberg himself pointed out the lack of tangible results. His statement that results should be seen in three to six months is being interpreted as an expression of pressure to deliver outcomes before investors lose patience. According to major foreign media outlets, a spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the reports.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.