Meta's Chief Data Officer Says Agentic Commerce is the "Next Tier of Business"
Meta's Chief Data Officer, Guy Schultz, envisions 'agentic commerce' as the next major business frontier, where AI agents handle logistics and transactions via WhatsApp. The company aims to position its messaging platforms as the primary interface for commerce, utilizing third-party stablecoins for payments rather than issuing its own currency.
Why it matters
This strategy signals a shift in Meta's financial services approach from proprietary currency development to becoming a neutral infrastructure layer for global conversational commerce, potentially bypassing traditional banking interfaces.
"We think it might be the next tier of business for our entire company," he told host, Sam Ewen.
Schultz framed the agentic economy the same way science fiction author William Gibson framed the future: already present, not yet mainstream.
"We are building business agents for all businesses," he said. "We have over a million weekly active businesses with Meta agents[...] from basically nothing at the start of the year."
The use case he outlined was deliberately mundane: coordinating a child's birthday party. Agents booking times, checking calendars, finding venues, communicating with other parents' agents, all on WhatsApp. The point of the mundane example is that it scales. If agents can handle low-stakes logistics, they can handle supply chain negotiations, financial settlements, and cross-border commerce.
"You write that example large," Schultz said, "and then if you're us, you hope that you do it over WhatsApp"
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