Meta Bets Its AI Future on Businesses—and MongoDB Pays the Price
Meta Bets Its AI Future on Businesses—and MongoDB Pays the Price
Meta’s enterprise AI push began with Muse, its personal assistant, which launched earlier this month with abilities including sending emails and booking travel. The company is now trying to turn that consumer-facing momentum into a business product line.
On Monday, Meta announced the Meta Enterprise Platform and hired Chirantan “CJ” Desai, then MongoDB’s chief executive, as chief enterprise platform officer reporting directly to Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg cast the move as a new commercial chapter for the company, saying Meta was “starting the next major pillar of our business.” In a follow-up post, he said Desai’s experience in AI, infrastructure and full-stack software made him the leader for the job.
Meta’s pitch is expansive: bring Muse, Meta Business Agent, the Muse API and Muse Code to companies and developers. Desai argued that AI will “fundamentally redefine” how organizations innovate, serve customers and run operations, and said Meta aims to turn its AI stack into deployable products and services.
The strategy also extends downward to smaller firms. On Tuesday, Meta announced Muse for Small Businesses, adding connectors for tools including Asana, Canva, QuickBooks, Shopify, Slack, Stripe and Zoom. Meta’s Vishal Shah said about a third of early Muse users were already linking a business account, adding: “People are using Muse to run their business.”
For Meta, the appeal is clear: a route to monetize enormous AI investment beyond consumer products. For MongoDB, the transition was immediately painful. Its shares fell more than 17% after Desai’s departure, and the company reinstated former CEO Dev Ittycheria as interim chief while it seeks a permanent replacement.
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