Zuckerberg on AI, AR Glasses, and Candid Take on AI Transformative Impact

Updated: May 09 2025 08:14

AI Summary: At the 2025 Stripe Sessions fireside chat, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared how AI is fundamentally transforming global commerce. Zuckerberg expressed confidence in Meta's accelerating AI progress, highlighting its potential to turn advertising into a "business results machine" and enable AI-powered business agents for enhanced customer engagement. He also emphasized Meta's strategic investment in AR/VR as the next computing platform to facilitate personalized AI and escape competitor control, viewing AR glasses as the ultimate social platform.

In a fireside chat at 2025 Stripe Sessions, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Stripe President John Collison to discuss how AI and advanced technologies are fundamentally transforming global commerce. The wide-ranging conversation offered rare insights into Zuckerberg's vision for Meta's AI strategy, his unconventional management philosophy, and how businesses of all sizes can leverage emerging technologies to thrive in an increasingly digital world.



Zuckerberg began the conversation with a confident assessment of Meta's AI progress: "The high level is it's on track." While acknowledging debates about whether we're in an AI bubble, he emphasized that Meta's AI initiatives are consistently exceeding expectations.

We keep on setting goals for our teams... and we keep on passing them. And then like others in the industry keep on passing their goals too. And we're like, 'Ah, we should have had even higher goals.'

This accelerating pace has Zuckerberg convinced that ambitious thinking is the right approach. "The more time that we work on this, it actually seems like all the things that we think are going to happen happen sooner, and being even more ambitious has been more predictive over the last few years about where things are likely going to be in the industry."



One of the most compelling insights Zuckerberg shared was his vision for transforming Meta's advertising system into what he described as "the ultimate business results machine."

The end goal, as Zuckerberg explained, is remarkably simple yet powerful: "Any business can come to us, say what their objective is... tell us how much they're willing to pay to achieve those results, connect their bank account, and then we just deliver as many results as we can."

This AI-powered approach is already changing how businesses approach advertising. Zuckerberg noted that Meta now encourages advertisers not to overly restrict who the AI targets: "The AI is actually probably going to be able to find who is going to be interested in your product better than you can."

This shift could fundamentally transform the advertising landscape. Historically, advertising has accounted for approximately 1% of global GDP, but much of that includes inefficient methods like billboards where "three-quarters of the people who see the billboard are not target customers." With AI optimization, Zuckerberg predicts advertising will grow as a portion of global GDP.


Beyond advertising, Zuckerberg is particularly excited about the potential of AI-powered business agents to revolutionize customer engagement. He envisions a future where "every business is going to have an AI agent that lives in the different messaging platforms that their customers can do customer support and sales through."

To illustrate this potential, Zuckerberg highlighted an interesting case study from Southeast Asia: "Thailand and Vietnam are kind of these interesting cases for us where there's relatively low cost of human labor, and because of that, a lot of the economy is sort of developed around messaging," he explained. "A large number of businesses out there can afford to have people who just do manual customer support and sales through messaging."

The result? Despite their relatively modest global GDP rankings (in the 30s), Thailand and Vietnam are Meta's 10th and 11th largest revenue countries.

Zuckerberg believes AI will bring this messaging-centric commerce model to developed markets where labor costs have previously made it prohibitively expensive. "When you get to the point where every business just has a business agent that is an AI agent that can do customer support and sales, I think that that's just going to turbocharge [commerce]."


While Meta is pursuing multiple AI strategies, Zuckerberg is particularly focused on developing what he calls "personal AI."

It's going to be more conversational, probably index a little bit more towards voice, be more personalized. I think people are going to want a system that gets to know them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do.

This vision ties directly to Meta's AR glasses strategy: "Glasses are kind of the perfect form factor for AI because you can let an AI see what you see and hear what you hear and talk to you throughout the day, and it should all just kind of get to know you."

Zuckerberg believes this personal approach differentiates Meta from companies focused more narrowly on areas like coding agents, though he acknowledges those will also be "a massive part of the economy."



Zuckerberg candidly acknowledged the challenges of delivering Meta's products through platforms controlled by competitors: "We deliver our services through our competitors... Apple and Google, probably two of our biggest competitors."

This competitive dynamic has driven Meta's push to define the next computing platform. Zuckerberg calculated that if Meta could do all the things they believe would benefit consumers without platform restrictions, "we might be twice as profitable as a company."

This realization led to Meta's significant investments in AR and VR technologies, even if that meant investing "a lot in advance of when the market is ready for prime time." Zuckerberg believes this early mover advantage is essential because "if we show up the same year as Apple or Google... I kind of assume the tie goes to them."

He proudly noted that Meta's VR products are "better and 10 times cheaper than Apple's," while their AR glasses are "selling many millions of units."

Looking ahead, Zuckerberg is convinced AR glasses will become "the ultimate social platform because holograms will deliver this feeling of presence like you're there with another person... that's something that no screen today can deliver."


In a particularly revealing segment, Zuckerberg shared his unconventional management philosophy, beginning with a surprising admission: "I don't even like managing people."

Rather than adhering to traditional management hierarchies, Zuckerberg has organized Meta into about 15 product groups with strong leaders. However, he maintains a non-hierarchical approach: "I've also set it up so I just go to the people who are running whatever the thing is that I care about."

His core leadership team, which he ironically calls "small group," consists of 25-30 people who have "context on every single thing that's happening across the company."

Perhaps most surprising was Zuckerberg's rejection of delegation as a leadership principle:

I basically don't believe in delegation... if there is a decision that I want to be involved with, I'm going to be involved in it.

He avoids recurring meetings and one-on-ones, preferring to maintain open time blocks in his schedule to focus on whatever needs his attention. "I get really frustrated and bad mood if my whole day is scheduled and there's a thing that I know is really important and I don't get time to do it... you have too many days like that in a row and I just explode."

For Zuckerberg, leadership effectiveness is less about org charts and more about building a densely connected network of talented people who understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. "You can't hire that. You have to build that," he emphasized.


Zuckerberg closed with advice for entrepreneurs, highlighting how modern platforms like Stripe and AI tools allow companies to focus more intently on their core mission.

If you were starting whatever you're starting 20 years ago, you would have had to have built up all these different competencies inside your company, and now there are just great platforms to do it.

This technological evolution means companies can now consist almost entirely of "people who are really passionate about the core thing that you're doing" rather than needing to build out extensive support functions.

Zuckerberg sees this as "a pretty cool vision for the future," where entrepreneurs are "much more empowered to focus on the core idea and be able to work together to accomplish things at larger scale than has ever been possible before at any other point in human history."

Throughout the conversation, Zuckerberg consistently returned to his belief that AI will transform "pretty much every category of product and every part of the economy." While he acknowledged that full integration into enterprise workflows might take 5-10 years, the consumer-facing applications are moving at breathtaking speed.

For businesses of all sizes, the message was clear: the AI revolution is not only coming—it's already here, and it's moving faster than even the most optimistic predictions. Those who embrace these technologies and focus on their core mission while leveraging powerful platforms will be best positioned to thrive in this rapidly evolving landscape.