I=7 Meta launches Business AI Agents across its platforms and on third-party websites powered by Shopify
Meta’s head of Business AI, Clara Shih, said the Business AI agent will be free for companies to embed in Meta ads, while deploying it on their own websites will come with a fee (cheaper than market alternatives, but not yet determined).
Shih said the agent can learn from your existing social posts, ad campaigns, and product catalog.
The Business AI Agent will launch later this month on WhatsApp and Messenger in Mexico and the Philippines, with more countries to follow.
Shih said 6 months ago that there are 200 million businesses in Meta Platforms.
Assessment
Meta’s Business AI Agents are unlikely to drive meaningful near-term revenue given WhatsApp’s usage is skewed towards lower-monetizing regions such as India and Philippines. However, embedding it into ads improve the value of Meta ads for businesses, helping Meta to continue capturing ad market share.
I=5 Meta’s Superintelligence Lab has flat management hierarchy, Zuckerberg said
In a recent interview with Rowan Cheung, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said they have organized the Superintelligence Lab to be flat i.e. they don’t want layers of management that aren’t technical. He pointed out that the team has no deadlines but they are moving as fast as they could.
He also said that the team sits closer to him (the chief scientist sits next to him and the rest of the team sit 15 feet away from him), ensuring that they have everything they need to move fast.
I=4 Zuckerberg thinks AI bubble is possible, based on past precedence
In a recent interview with Access Podcast, Zuckerberg said he thinks it’s quite possible to have an AI bubble, based on past precedence (min 1:08:43).
He pointed out that if they misspend a couple of hundred billion dollars, it could be very unfortunate. But the risk for not being aggressive enough is higher (min 1:11:00).
On starting to see first glimpses of AI improving itself (as he mentioned some months ago), he gave an example of a Facebook team using Llama 4 to make autonomous agent that improved Facebook algorithm (min 1:15:25)
I=5 Meta hires Thinking Machines Labs co-founder, the Wall Street Journal reported
Meta has hired Andrew Tulloch, Thinking Machines Labs co-founder and a star AI researcher, Wall Street Journal reported citing an internal memo.
Thinking Machines Labs is valued at more than $2 billion and is composed of around 20 former OpenAI researchers.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2025 that Meta had offered Tulloch a pay package of more than $1.5 billion but had declined. Meta had described the pay offer as “inaccurate and ridiculous”.
I=7 Meta partners with Blue Owl Capital on $27 billion AI data center with Meta having 20% stake
Meta announced a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth $27 billion for the construction of Hyperion data center in Louisiana.
Blue Owl Capital will own an 80% interest in the joint venture, while Meta will retain the remaining 20% ownership.
The $27 billion will be shared on a pro rata basis.
The joint venture will have a residual value guarantee for the first 16 years of operations of the data center.
It was reported in August that the Louisiana data center will cost $50 billion and the PIMCO and Blue Owl Capital will spearhead a $29 billion financing for the data center.
I=6 Meta is cutting around 600 legacy AI roles, Axios reported citing an internal memo
Meta is cutting around 600 AI roles out of around 3,400 roles within its Superintelligence lab, Axiosreported citing an internal memo.
The job cuts will affect Meta’s FAIR AI research unit, product-related AI and AI infrastructure units, but will spare the TBD lab (in charge of developing next generation Llama models).
Meta is encouraging employees to find roles in other divisions within the company.
I=8 Meta AI app continues to benefit from the launch of Vibes but Sora’s momentum continues
Meta AI app continues to benefit from the launch of Vibes on Sept. 25, with downloads on both iOS and Android up 56% month-to-month to a total of 3.9 million as of Oct.18, according to data from Appfigures.
However, Sora continues to show better momentum. From Sept. 30 through Oct. 18, Sora saw 2.6 million downloads on iOS, compared to the 1.1 million downloads of the Meta AI app.
Dozen of creators and marketers who spoke with CNBC said they generally find Sora easier to use. Sora is also said to produce more realistic videos than Meta’s Vibes.
Meta has been paying creators to produce AI-generated videos for Vibes as a way to boost its visibility, CNBC reported citing people familiar with the matter.
Unlike Sora which is powered by OpenAI’s proprietary model, Meta AI’s Vibes relies on models made by third parties like Midjourney and Black Forest Labs.
I=7 Meta’s FAIR Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave the company and start his own startup, Financial Times reported
LeCun who is considered the pioneer of modern AI has told associates that he will leave Meta Platforms in the coming months and plans to raise funds for his own startup, Financial Times reported.
LeCun and Meta declined to comment.
LeCun’s departure follows Zuckerberg’s pivot away from the work of FAIR to superintelligence.
LeCun was working on human-level intelligence models that could take years to materialize and has been heading a team at FAIR since 2013.
Assessment
In my opinion, it makes sense that LeCun is leaving given reduced relevance of FAIR. Meta’s Superintelligence (MSL) now has its own chief scientist ( Shengjia Zhao), who co-created ChatGPT. Nevertheless, his exit could lead to more departures of legacy AI executives.
I=6 Internal documents indicate Meta’s Vibes had 2 million daily active users as of November 9, up 1% from the previous week
Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider indicate Meta’s Vibes AI Feed had 2 million daily active users as of November 9, up 1% from the previous week.
Open AI doesn’t publish daily active user (DAU) numbers for Vibes competitor Sora, but Similarweb estimates that Sora had 673,000 DAUs in November.
Most of Vibes growth in early November came from India, where it had 704,000 DAUs (+22%) and Brazil (114,000 DAUs, +13%).
It had 23,000 DAUs in Europe, three days after its launch in the region.
Vibes user retention is average, with 60% of users returning the following week.
I=6 Yann LeCun confirms that he’s leaving Meta to start his own startup which Meta will be a partner
Meta’s Chief AI Scientist for FAIR confirmed in a Facebook post that he’s leaving the company to start his own startup which will continue the work he did at Meta.
LeCun said Meta will be a partner in his startup company.
"I am creating a startup company to continue the Advanced Machine Intelligence research program (AMI) I have been pursuing over the last several years with colleagues at FAIR, at NYU, and beyond. The goal of the startup is to bring about the next big revolution in AI: systems that understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences, " he wrote.
“Because of their continued interest and support, Meta will be a partner of the new company,” he added.
LeCun has been outspoken that Meta and other companies are wrong to focus on large language models (LLMs), saying the models might never reach human-level intelligence.
LeCun was also a key supporter of open-source models, an approach that Meta has publicly shifted away from.
LeCun’s open criticism of Meta’s AI strategy meant he clashed with others internally, and several employees sought to keep him out of the spotlight, Bloombergreported citing people at Meta.
Financial Timesreported last week about the planned departure.
Assessment
With LeCun’s departure, Meta’s focus on TBD labs (lab in charge of LLMs), and Meta’s plan to partner with LeCun, I think Meta might shut down FAIR. FAIR has around 1,000 employees (Meta AI Team-Notion).
I=6 Meta released SAM 3 and SAM 3D models, which have received positive reviews
Meta releasedSAM 3 and SAM 3D last week, new models in its Segment Anything lineup that expand how AI understands images and video.
SAM 3 can detect and track objects using text or visual prompts, while SAM 3D can turn a single photo into a 3D object or person.
Meta said unlike earlier models, SAM 3 can understand very specific text prompts (“red baseball cap”, “yellow school bus”), enabling object-level precision for editing, safety tools, and creator workflows.
SAM3 will power features in Edits, Meta AI, and Facebook Marketplace.
Assessment
Earlier reviews indicate that SAM 3 is a leap forward in visual segmentation though it still has some shortcomings such as blurred images and skipping from one image to another. Some reviews indicate that the model puts pressure on OpenAI and Gemini to improve theirs.
I=6 Meta plans to use Google’s AI chips from next year
Meta is discussing using Google’s AI chips from 2027, The Information reported.
Meta also plans to rent chips from Google’s cloud division next year.
Google claims its TPUs are 15–30% faster than traditional CPUs and significantly more energy-efficient than Nvidia GPUs for AI workloads, especially inference tasks.
Gemini 3 which has received glowing reviews was actually trained using Google’s TPUs.
Assessment
I think the announcement is good for AI chips pricing and diversification. That said, I won’t be surprised to see Nvidia investing in Meta’s data centers (theory) to tackle competition since that has been their strategy. In September after The Informationreported OpenAI was close to using Google’s AI chips, Nvidia announced it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI’s data centers as part of a deal in which OpenAI would use Nvidia’s next-generation chips. Nvidia also announced this month that it would invest $10 billion in Anthropic, which has been using Amazon and Google Chips as part of a deal that would also see Anthropic deploy Nvidia chips.
The report could also signal closer partnership between Google and Meta and could collaborate earlier reports that Meta plans to temporarily use Google’s Gemini to improve its ad business.
I=5 Meta’s Hyperion data center accounting doesn’t make sense, The Wall Street Journal reported
According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta’s off-balance-sheet treatment of the $27 billion financing for its Hyperion data center seems questionable.
Meta is trying to structure the financing so it looks like it doesn’t own or owe anything, even though it likely controls and bears most risks economically, which would require it to record the financing in the Balance Sheet.
Assessment
If this is true, credit rating agencies might flag it and compute Meta’s leverage ratio with this financing included.
I think this is nothing new and basically no risk at all. Metas debt is tiny compared to operating cash flows.
My theory (not further researched) is that they seek strategic financing partners like blue owl and build relationships with them in case they want to tap them for further financing - having worked before helps in this regard.
Similarly I believe the reason why Meta started to have some debt a couple of years ago is to build relationships with banks/creditors just in case they would ever need them as those institutions would have researched and understood Meta due to the previous working relationship.
