Hello, Reader.
Working hard, or hardly working?
This tongue-in-cheek “dad joke” is meant to lift spirits when kids are doing homework or coworkers are “in the weeds” trying to be productive.
It typically gets you a comradely laugh. Or maybe an obligatory chuckle.
But thanks to AI, we can now pose it as a genuine question to Silicon Valley CEOs.
Case in point: Mark Zuckerberg.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Meta Platforms Inc. (META) CEO is building his very own AI “CEO agent” to help him with the job. That’s right – AI is moving from supporting employees to taking on CEO-level responsibilities.
The agent is still in development, but Zuckerberg is already using it in limited ways. It helps him retrieve information quickly, a task that would typically require going through multiple teams or layers of people. It’s meant to speed up decision-making and act like a high-level internal assistant.
So, Zuck: Working hard or hardly working?
As Meta’s CEO pushes deeper into AI agents, the implications go far beyond that social media company
In today’s Smart Money, we’ll unpack how this shift is redefining Meta’s broader AI strategy and further examine the widespread deployment of AI agents.
Then, before AI agents enter every C-suite, I’ll reveal how the best course of action is not to invest in the firms developing those agents… but in the companies powering them.
Let’s dive in…
Zuckerberg’s New Right-Hand “Man”
Meta, like many companies worldwide, already uses AI to speed up its operations.
In addition to using AI to complete employee performance reviews (I think everyone’s doing this), it’s encouraging its workers to create their own AI tools to assist with everyday tasks. The tech giant recently acquired Manus, a Singapore-based agentic AI startup, which is already being used by Meta employees to do just that.
But that’s just the beginning. The company’s goal is for every employee and, eventually, every Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp user to have a personal AI agent.
The reason for this widespread adoption, up to and including the CEO himself, is simple: to remain competitive with AI startups that rely heavily on automation, have smaller staffs, and move faster as a result.
From Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer:
Making sure that we don’t – for a company at the size and scale that we are – that we don’t work any less efficiently than companies that are AI native from the start, that’s something that I think about a lot.
Meta is far from alone in striving for AI-powered efficiency.
In an interview last week with MIT Technology Review, OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki discussed the company’s ongoing project to build a fully automated researcher, which aligns with CEO Sam Altman’s timeline of its models acting as research interns by 2028.
These efforts from OpenAI show that AI is redefining what organizations are capable of producing in the first place, expanding the frontier of what’s possible.
AI is being built to cover responsibilities from intern level to CEO level. It’s only a matter of time before it comes for the “dad jokes.”
Of course, large scale AI implementation has serious consequences, especially for job security. Meta’s AI-related layoffs began in 2022, when it cut around 13% of its workforce. And it looks like that may be ramping back up. The Information reported earlier this week that Meta is chopping a few hundred more jobs today.
But here’s the thing: As the company’s workforce shrinks and its AI use grows, that means so, too, is its capital spending.
The Paradox of AI Efficiency: It Isn’t Cheap
Over the last three years, Meta has spent roughly $140 billion on AI infrastructure and plans to spend up to $135 billion this year alone. By 2028, it expects to have spent $600 billion on AI data centers.
Additionally, just this month, Facebook’s parent company announced its $27 billion acquisition of cloud provider Nebius Group NV (NBIS) to meet its compute needs.
Of course, Zuckerberg isn’t alone in spending more… in the hopes of ultimately spending less.
Last week, multiple outlets reported that Jeff Bezos aims to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would purchase manufacturing companies in the chipmaking, defense, and aerospace sectors, “and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation.”
AI has become essential for these tech giants to reach their ambitions. But that also means the physical building blocks behind AI – like raw materials, energy, and memory – are just as essential. AI agents in particular have massive need of these components.
But, as we’ve been sounding the alarm on, these resources are increasingly in short supply. And shortages of these key physical components are creating bottlenecks that are rapidly reshaping the entire investment landscape.
I believe Main Street investors have a narrow window to act before it’s too late.
That is why I detail these building bottlenecks – and the early actions to take – in my FutureProof 2026 presentation.
When supply is tight, companies controlling these materials can see their profits soar. That flips the workplace wisecrack on its head.
Forget working hard or hardly working. That’s working smarter.
I’m tracking several companies that sit directly at the center of these shortages – which Wall Street still hasn’t fully priced it in. During the free presentation, I reveal 15 companies poised to reap the benefits of the memory, raw materials, and energy bottlenecks.
But there’s not much time left to tune in. The video will be taken down at midnight tonight.
As AI and AI agents infiltrate every ring of the corporate ladder, it’s only prudent to profit from the demand they create.
Click here for all the details.
Regards,
Eric Fry
P.S. To show my appreciation to all of you Smart Money readers, I’ve put together a brand-new, free special report: Meet the Mag 7 Killers: 3 Heavy Assets Crushing Al Hyperscalers in 2026.
And it’s available to you today. You can read the full report here.
