“AI is creating huge amounts of disruption in enterprise today,” CFO Susan Li said during the tech company’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. “We really don’t believe that traditional enterprise companies have this locked down.”

Some leading companies in this space didn’t exist a few years ago, Li said. Those companies made large investments in model development, and Meta has done the same, she added.

“We have increasingly competitive models to bring to bear for the benefit of all of our users, including small businesses and enterprises,” Li said.

Meta announced on Sept. 28 plans to launch a Meta Enterprise Platform. The company has hired former MongoDB CEO Chirantan “CJ” Desai to build out the platform.

Meta’s goal is to eventually compete across parts of the enterprise software and AI markets by combining its models with business-facing products, application programming interfaces (APIs) and AI agents integrated into its messaging and social platforms.

“We really believe that AI is going to reshape how businesses operate,” Li said. Businesses could adopt AI agents for software development, productivity, sales, marketing and customer service.

“It’s our hope that this will be able to be a new diversified recurring revenue stream for us that will be able to support multiple business models,” Li said.

Meta aims to monetize these offerings through subscriptions, usage-based APIs, messaging and other business models, potentially creating a recurring revenue stream beyond advertising.

This is a long-term goal. It will be an opportunity set to “develop over multiple years,” Li said, and the company intends to scale its investment behind “demonstrated customer demand and product market fit in this area.”

Meta is currently expanding its consumer AI offerings, providing another indication of how the company is approaching adoption, usage and product economics.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the call that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had set up Muse personal agents within six weeks of launch, with about 25% using them on any given day.

Revenue growth funds AI investments

Meta’s advertising business is funding its AI ambitions, with third-quarter revenue rising 26% year over year to $64.6 billion, above analysts’ expectations of $63.3 billion. The global average price per ad increased 14%, reflecting stronger ad performance and more favorable macroeconomic conditions. The company also said it created a Class C stock share class to help it fund the AI buildout, pay employee stock compensation, and fund acquisitions, Fortune reported.

Capital expenditures, including finance lease principal payments, reached $34.9 billion in the third quarter, up from $19.4 billion a year earlier. The company raised the lower end of its full-year capex forecast to $135 billion, from $130 billion, while maintaining the upper end at $145 billion.

Total expenses rose 68% year over year to $51.6 billion, reflecting higher infrastructure spending, third-party AI token costs and a $9.9 billion charge related to an August agreement with multiple state attorneys general. 

Meta expects fourth-quarter revenue of $73 billion to $76 billion, compared with analysts’ consensus estimate of $73.75 billion.

Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Rick Buffington was named CFO of Wiser Solutions, a commerce intelligence platform. Buffington brings financial and operational leadership experience. Most recently, he served in a senior finance leadership role at MultiTracks.com. His previous experience includes leadership roles at Accruent and Community Brands, where he developed expertise in scaling software businesses, building high-performing finance organizations and driving operational performance.

Jacky He was promoted to CFO of Wishpond Technologies Ltd., a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions, effective Nov. 1. He will succeed Adrian Lim, who has decided to step down as CFO effective Oct. 31. The company expects to retain Mr. Lim as an outside advisor. He joined Wishpond in 2020 and has risen from senior accountant to senior manager of accounting. Before joining Wishpond, He held accounting and finance roles at Oppy and Avocette Technologies Inc.

Big Deal

Skillsoft’s “Workforce Readiness Report: Execution Gap Edition” highlights a growing disconnect between organizations’ awareness of workforce skills gaps and their ability to address them before they affect business performance.

Based on a survey of 2,000 employees, managers, and executives across the U.S., U.K., and Germany, the report found that 77% of managers recognize skills gaps in their organizations, yet 54% say employees are frequently or always assigned work they lack the skills to perform. These gaps contribute to quality issues, delayed AI adoption, slower service delivery, employee burnout, and customer dissatisfaction.

The report emphasizes the need for companies to better understand workforce capabilities, align learning and development with business priorities, and provide timely support so employees have the skills needed to succeed. Ultimately, workforce readiness is not just about offering training; it is about ensuring people have the right skills to deliver meaningful business outcomes.

Going deeper

"Powerful new AI models are fueling a growing wave of cyberattacks, experts say" is an article by Fortune's Emily Forlini.

Forlini writes: "Starting on Sept. 25, a hacker set loose an army of AI agents that attempted to break into over 1,200 websites over the following few weeks—autonomously, with no additional work required of the human hacker after sending them off on their task.The agents successfully breached about 100 companies. Read more here.

Overheard

Will data centers, semiconductors, and AI models prove equally long-lasting? Perhaps. But that process will take decades, not months or years.

—Ming Lu, a senior advisory partner at KKR, and previously executive chairman of KKR Asia Pacific, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.