Meta has reported that weekly conversations between people and business AIs on WhatsApp and Messenger surpassed 10 million, up from just 1 million at the start of the year. A tenfold increase in a single quarter.
Announced during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, the expansion has already reached SMBs across Latin America, Indonesia, and Asia Pacific, with further global rollout planned for Q2.
Just weeks ago, we covered how Meta was harvesting employee keystrokes to train its AI agents. Now, the company has offered the clearest indication yet of what those agents look like in deployment.
Susan Li, Meta's Chief Financial Officer, confirmed the scale of the progress during the call:
“We now have more than 10 million conversations each week being facilitated through business AIs, up from 1 million at the start of the year.”
“We will further expand access to more countries this quarter while adding more capabilities to the AIs.”
For CX leaders, the significance here is less about the geography and more about the pace. A 10x increase in 90 days points to a channel finding real traction with real businesses.
WhatsApp as a Customer Service Channel is Quietly Going Mainstream
Much of the industry's attention on AI in customer service has been trained on voice AI, virtual agents, and CCaaS platform updates.
Meanwhile, Meta has been building out its messaging infrastructure on a parallel track, and the Q1 figures suggest that track is moving faster than many in the industry have accounted for.
WhatsApp has long been discussed as a high-potential customer service channel, particularly in markets where it dominates mobile communication.
Indeed, around 68% of WhatsApp users believe it’s the most convenient way to engage with brands.
Meta’s data suggests the conversation is shifting from potential to practice, with the tech giant also reporting that WhatsApp paid messaging and subscriptions drove a 74% year-over-year rise in its “Family of Apps Other Revenue” – a category that barely registered 18 months ago.
For contact center leaders who have been watching WhatsApp from the sidelines, that combination of usage growth and revenue momentum may tempt many to revisit the channel.
The customers, in many of the world's fastest-growing markets, are already there. The AI infrastructure to serve them is clearly scaling.
