As Big Tech chases enterprise AI, Meta and Apple double down on small businesses

While much of Silicon Valley is racing to build the best AI “coworker” for big corporations, Meta and Apple are betting the bigger opportunity lies elsewhere: small businesses.

Meta is launching a new companywide initiative aimed at helping entrepreneurs start and grow businesses using AI tools across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Axios reported Wednesday. A day earlier, Apple unveiled Apple Business, a platform that bundles together tools for managing devices, employees, and customer interactions.

These moves seem different from the AI copilots coming out of Microsoft, Anthropic, and others. Those companies are focused on selling AI into enterprises, with tools that help employees write code, draft documents, and potentially replace some of their coworkers.

Meanwhile, Meta and Apple are leveraging their already strong base of small-business customers — Meta for communication tools and advertising revenue, and Apple through its devices, payments, and app ecosystem — to less flashy ends.

Meta is leaning into its strength as a distribution and marketing platform for small businesses, aiming to offer them AI tools to attract customers, create content, and manage interactions.

“In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for people to build new businesses,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo. “We want to build the services that enable this.”

Unlike rivals pouring hundreds of billions into enterprise AI infrastructure, Meta doesn’t have a major enterprise software business to offset those costs.

Apple’s move is less explicitly about AI — and comes as it has struggled to match competitors’ momentum in the space — but similarly plays to its strengths. By consolidating business tools into a single platform, it’s positioning itself as the infrastructure layer for smaller companies operating within its ecosystem.

The AI race may be focused on the enterprise, but Meta and Apple are going after everyone else.