Dive Brief:
- Meta announced the Meta Enterprise Platform on Monday, a tech stack including its Muse agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API and Muse Code, which the company said will be targeting business operations and developers.
- The company appointed Chirantan “CJ” Desai, formerly the CEO of MongoDB, as chief enterprise platform officer. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that Desai’s track record for building full-stack software and experience in AI, infrastructure, business applications and security will aid in the enterprise business’ goals.
- The enterprise AI provider market is a lucrative and more predictable business model than its consumer counterpart, but Meta may need to lay a lot of technical and security groundwork before earning the business of many enterprise decision-makers, Arun Chandrasekaran, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, told CIO Dive. “It’s a huge chasm, I would argue, for Meta to gain the trust of CIOs,” he said.
Dive Insight:
Meta is betting that familiarity with its commercial products and platforms will translate into desirable enterprise offerings for CIOs.
But it’s not Meta’s first foray into AI for business — the Llama model family was first introduced in 2023, and developed into multimodal models that became popular with developers, Chandrasekaran said. But the company couldn’t get a platform based on the models off the ground.
More recently, the company rolled out Muse, a consumer-facing agent that has been touted as simplifying day-to-day life by completing tasks for a user; it’s possible Meta “saw a bigger opportunity in the enterprise,” Chandrasekaran said.
The move follows agent offerings including OpenAI’s Workspace agents, Microsoft’s Copilot and Anthropic’s Cowork, as the major AI providers race to release the most popular enterprise offerings — and where newcomers can quickly disrupt market leaders.
But there are factors CIOs should consider about Meta’s announcement before jumping in, Chandrasekaran said.
Meta hasn’t provided details about the pricing of its enterprise platform or distribution methods. Both are large undertakings, Chandrasekaran said, and they pair with another critical factor for CIOs — the integration and connectivity foundations enterprises will need to begin using the AI agents with existing platforms like SAP or ServiceNow.
“Agents don’t run in a vacuum, particularly in the enterprise,” Chandrasekaran said. “Meta has to build that entire runtime and orchestration layer that will enable their AI agents to be plugged more seamlessly into their enterprise ecosystem.”
Many CIOs would also likely see Meta’s governance, safety and security as needing an overhaul before being up to enterprise standards, Chandrasekaran said.
Gartner had previously advised that the company would likely need an enterprise leader to get in the mindset of CIOs and CTOs, Chandrasekaran said. Desai’s appointment appears designed to help bridge the gap between commercial and enterprise customers, he added.
Desai said in a statement that Meta’s Enterprise Platform will focus on turning its AI stack into products and services that companies can deploy for their own businesses.
“Our goal is to make Meta the place enterprises come to scale their businesses,” he said.
Though it could take some work to get CIOs on board with Meta’s new offerings, Chandrasekaran said the provider may be hoping staffers’ familiarity with Meta will ease enterprise adoption.
“Meta is probably making a bet that employees across these enterprises are going to play with AI agents in their personal lives … and they think, ‘They’re going to be our champions, and they’re going to try to bring us into the enterprise,’” Chandrasekaran said.
