Zuckerberg tells staff Meta’s AI agent push is advancing slower than planned, Reuters reported

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees at an internal town hall that the company’s push to build “AI agents” is progressing slower than he had expected, according to a recording described by Reuters and later reported by Channel News Asia. AI agents are software systems designed to take actions or carry out tasks toward goals, rather than simply answering questions like a traditional chatbot.

In the account, Zuckerberg said that Meta’s larger restructuring, which included major job cuts earlier this year, was “not as clean” as it could have been. He also indicated that executives had miscalculated some of the timing of the changes, and that the organization’s adjustment has required additional effort to regain momentum.

The reporting tied Zuckerberg’s remarks to Meta’s earlier moves around artificial intelligence staffing and funding priorities. Meta laid off about 10% of its global workforce and reassigned roughly 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams in May, changes that drew employee pushback and raised morale concerns, according to the same description.

Zuckerberg and other executives have been seeking to moderate aspects of the organizational changes without fundamentally changing course, the report said. The restructuring was intended to free up resources for expensive AI infrastructure investments and to better position Meta to take advantage of efficiency gains from AI-assisted work.

The remarks also included what Zuckerberg told employees in May about the near-term outlook for layoffs. He said he did not expect further companywide layoffs later in 2026, while some workers remained skeptical, reflecting how internal confidence about the transition may not match the company’s operational plans.

Meta’s current challenge, as implied by the reporting, is not only technical execution but also workforce alignment. When large-scale restructuring and shifting priorities happen at the same time as rapid AI development, delays in product capabilities can be compounded by internal transition costs, including team reassignments and process changes.

Still, key details were not disclosed in the described account. The reporting did not provide specific dates for milestones that have slipped, performance benchmarks for the agent technology, or an updated timeline for when AI agents will reach particular capabilities. It also did not specify whether the “slower than expected” assessment related to agent reliability, speed of deployment across products, or internal readiness to scale.

For Meta, the immediate watch item is whether the company will pair its staffing and execution adjustments with clearer external progress indicates. Investors and users are likely to look for concrete indicators tied to agent-like features, and for any additional commentary on how internal reorganization is affecting delivery schedules.