Meta Ditches Google Chat for Slack Over AI Agent Capabilities
Meta is abandoning Google Chat for Slack as its internal communication platform after realizing that Slack handles AI agents better. According to Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, this decision reverses one made less than a year ago when they initially chose Google Chat due to its integration with Google Workspace.
In the memo explaining the switch, Wang acknowledged that another migration so soon would be 'disruptive and painful' for employees but justified it by saying Slack's stronger agentic capabilities will benefit the whole company. The rollout will happen in two phases: Meta Superintelligence Labs, the Agent Transformation Accelerator, and DevInfra get early access from September 15, while the rest of the company follows on September 29.
This move is a significant win for Salesforce, which acquired Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021 and has been building agent features into it, including one-click deployment of agents built on outside platforms like LangChain and OpenAI. The switch highlights the growing importance of AI agents in business communications.