Zuckerberg says Meta’s AI agent progress slower than expected

Mark ZuckerbergMeta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) agent technology is advancing more slowly than anticipated, while admitting its recent restructuring was not as smooth as expected, according to a recording of an internal town hall heard by Reuters.Zuckerberg said Meta’s reorganisation, which included major job cuts and the reassignment of about 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams, was “not as clean” as it could have been and that executives had misjudged the timing of the changes.The restructuring, announced in May, was aimed at funding the company’s expanding AI infrastructure investments and positioning Meta to benefit from AI-driven productivity gains.

At the time, Zuckerberg had said he did not expect further companywide layoffs this year, though some employees remained sceptical.Reflecting on the strategy, Zuckerberg said progress in agentic AI systems—software capable of carrying out tasks autonomously on behalf of users—had not accelerated as the company had expected over the past four months.He said executives had entered the restructuring with optimism, encouraged by rapid advances in AI coding tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code, but acknowledged that Meta’s expectations had yet to materialise.According to the report, Meta is projected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year as part of the broader technology industry’s more than $700 billion investment in AI.Despite the slower-than-expected progress, Zuckerberg said he expects Meta to begin seeing more meaningful returns from its AI investments over the next three to six months.Separately, Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth said an internal review into the company’s controversial mouse-tracking software found that no employee data had been used to train AI models.Meta paused the programme last month amid concerns about the exposure of sensitive data.

Bosworth said that if the programme is reinstated following the review, employees will be able to opt in voluntarily.