Meta is doubling down on small businesses with a new entrepreneurship initiative aimed at accelerating AI adoption among millions of SMBs already using its platforms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the plans in an internal memo to staff, signaling a strategic shift to deepen the company's ties with entrepreneurs who've become a cornerstone of its business model. While tens of millions of small businesses already use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to reach customers, Meta wants to transform how they operate by embedding AI tools directly into their workflows.
Meta just opened a new front in the AI wars, and this time it's targeting the small business battlefield. CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the company's latest strategic priority in a memo to employees, announcing a new initiative that combines entrepreneurship support with aggressive AI adoption for the millions of SMBs that already depend on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The timing isn't accidental. Small businesses represent a massive and largely underserved market when it comes to AI tooling. While enterprise clients have been flooded with custom AI solutions from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, mom-and-pop shops and solo entrepreneurs have mostly been left to fend for themselves with consumer-grade chatbots.
"Small businesses have always been a big part of the company's business model," Zuckerberg wrote in the memo, according to TechCrunch. But he acknowledged that despite tens of millions of entrepreneurs already using Meta's platforms to grow and connect with customers, "the company wants to do more in the space."
That's putting it mildly. Meta's advertising business generated $154.5 billion in revenue last year, with small and medium businesses accounting for a significant chunk of that total. But the company's been watching nervously as Google rolls out AI-powered ad tools and embeds Copilot into everything from Excel to LinkedIn. If Meta loses ground in helping SMBs run their operations more efficiently, it risks losing them as advertisers entirely.
