The acquisition will enable the tech giant to build the Meta Business Agent and enhance its chatbot for SMBs.
Meta has acquired Stilla.AI, a Swedish AI start-up to help the tech giant develop its usiness agent.
The Meta Business Agent will look to bring transaction capabilities to Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Axios reported.
Stilla developed a workplace agent, which uses information about the organisation and the existing tools from a team’s arsenal to transform context into actions.
It is not yet clear whether the acquisition will see Stilla’s features integrated into WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger going forward.
There is currently no publicly available information regarding a customer migration plan, nor any explanation of how contracts and accounts may be affected once the deal is finalised.
Meta has previously acquired companies to seemingly bring onboard specialist developers and technology rather than to fully integrate a product itself, such as its purchase of Moltbook earlier this year.
This outlines Meta’s ongoing efforts to introduce more consumer-side AI technology, particularly in its messaging ecosystem. The acquisition is the latest in Meta’s push to build conversational AI chatbots for small businesses.
With the expanded capabilities, Meta is looking to develop systems for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) to support customers, convert conversations to purchases, and market products, all in one place.
According to the company, over one million businesses currently use the Business Agent chatbot for customer interactions, underpinning the appetite for AI-fuelled small business features.
The acquisition is of particular interest to marketers and SMBs because automated response bots for customer support currently look to answer straightforward questions, operating much like an FAQs.
Context supported agents however, are able to handle more complex demands, drawing on an organisation’s catalogue, policies, escalation rules, and customer information to provide more detailed responses.
This could mean that SMBs are able to keep more of their organisation on Meta sites and consolidate their business interactions.
