According to Shih's LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Meta will partner Clara, CEO of AI at Salesforce, to lead a new organization that will build AI tools for companies that use Meta's apps to reach consumers. The company reportedly hired Mr. Shih. Meta confirmed the appointment and the new Business AI group in a statement to TechCrunch.
“Today, I’m excited to share that I’m joining Meta to lead our new Business AI group,” Shih said in a LinkedIn post. “Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI available to every business, enabling everyone to find success and own their future in the AI era.”
According to TechCrunch, another Salesforce AI executive, Adam Evans, will take over Shih's role and oversee the company's AI efforts. According to LinkedIn, Evans currently serves as executive vice president and general manager of AI at Salesforce.
Meta has an unusual business model when it comes to AI and claims to use an open source approach, but that's not how everyone defines it. Mark Zuckerberg's company doesn't sell subscriptions to AI chatbots like OpenAI or Google to make money. Instead, Meta is betting that Llama's large language model will make its current family of apps better. These AI tools for companies appear to be part of this effort.
Specifically, Meta's new group plans to bring AI products built with Llama to the millions of businesses that advertise and create content on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It's unclear exactly what tools Meta will be able to provide these people with, but it seems likely that it will offer tools to create AI-generated ads. Meta has recently been pushing more AI-generated content to its social media feeds, including a carousel of AI-generated photos on Facebook and an AI chatbot that mimics content creators on Instagram.
This is a notable change for Meta's platform, which previously featured only human-generated content. Providing companies with the tools to generate more ads cheaply could be very lucrative for Meta. It's unclear whether Meta will sell these AI tools or provide them for free as a way to increase advertising spending, the company's main source of revenue.
“These latest advancements in AI are helping businesses increase efficiency and significantly improve the experience they provide to their customers,” John Hegeman, vice president and head of monetization at Meta, said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. I believe this will be an important opportunity to improve.” “This new product group under Clara’s leadership will help us realize that vision.”
Shih previously led Salesforce's AI efforts, which weren't always a huge success. In May, Salesforce stock suffered its biggest decline since 2008, largely as investors worried that the corporate giant had missed the AI boom. The corporate giant told investors at the time that it expected the next quarter's growth rate to be the lowest on record. Since then, Salesforce has focused on AI and released an AI agent developer platform called Agentforce. The company's CEO, Marc Benioff, has gone on the offensive, publicly criticizing Microsoft's efforts in enterprise AI.
Salesforce did not immediately respond on the record to TechCrunch's request for comment.
Now, it looks like Mr. Shi has a chance to start something new at Meta. Meta is the company for which she wrote a book in 2009 called “The Facebook Era.''