Meta acquired a Swedish AI startup to accelerate the development of a business agent

Meta Platforms, an AI developer and social media company, has acquired the Swedish AI startup Stilla.ai, Axios reports, citing sources. The company aims to accelerate the development of Meta Business Agent—a tool that facilitates transactions via WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, the news outlet reports. Once the deal closes, the Stilla team and its technology will join Meta, Axios has learned.

Stilla was founded in 2024. In January, the startup raised $5 million in early-stage funding. Stilla.ai is developing an enterprise AI agent that connects to a client company’s business services, accesses context from various systems, and independently performs tasks—from sending messages and updating documents to working with code.

“Before founding Stilla, we spent about ten years developing and scaling products at Shopify,” the company’s team states on the Stilla website. “We founded [the e-commerce platform] Tictail, [the order-tracking app for shoppers] Shop, and [the payment tool] Shop Pay—which now process more than $100 billion annually.”

Stilla did not respond to Axios' request for comment.

Over the past decade, Meta has been actively developing a commerce infrastructure that connects millions of small businesses with more than 1 billion users of its messaging apps, according to Axios. A significant part of these efforts now hinges on how useful Meta’s chatbots will prove to be for merchants who need to turn customer interactions into sales, the website explains. Meta has reported that more than 1 million companies are already using its Business Agent chatbot to interact with customers. Following the deal with Stilla, Meta plans to expand its presence in Sweden, Axios explains.

The announcement of the acquisition of the AI startup came as a surprise, as it was made the day after Meta unveiled Muse, a personal AI agent designed to perform tasks on behalf of users across various apps and online services. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg draws a clear distinction between agents for businesses and personal agents for regular users, and it is in the latter category that he sees the greatest opportunities for the company, Bloomberg reported on September 8.

Meta shares rose 6.6% on Wednesday, to $653.70 each. Investors and analysts reacted positively to the launch of Muse, according to Yahoo Finance. “We believe that the personal AI agent Muse marks the beginning of a major new product cycle for Meta, which is not yet reflected in the stock price,” the portal quotes a note from Mizuho Securities analysts. The bank recommends “buying” Meta shares and has set a price target of $750, which is nearly 15% higher than the closing price on September 9.

Analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets maintained their "outperform" rating and $780 price target for Meta shares. They noted on Wednesday that “the market continues to underestimate Meta’s position in AI and the potential of its new product cycle,” according to Yahoo Finance.

Wall Street, on the whole, views the stock of the company that owns Facebook and Instagram with optimism: of the 65 analysts tracking Meta’s stock, 58 recommend buying it, and only seven recommend holding it, according to MarketWatch data. The analysts’ consensus price is $745.4, which is 14% higher than the closing price on September 9.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor