Meta has appointed enterprise AI veteran Clara Shih to spearhead its business artificial intelligence division, marking a strategic push into corporate AI solutions just weeks before Salesforce's crucial Q3 earnings report.
Meta is intensifying its enterprise AI strategy by establishing a dedicated Business AI group under Clara Shih, the former CEO of Salesforce AI, who joins as Vice President and Head of Business AI. The move comes at a buoyant time for enterprise technology, with Salesforce scheduled to report its Q3 earnings after markets close on December 3.
Shih's departure from Salesforce comes with the company close to its market peak, with shares closing at $323.43 yesterday, near its year's high of $324.70. The broader enterprise technology sector also showed momentum yesterday, with ServiceNow and Oracle gaining 1.5%, while Microsoft edged up just under 0.5%.
During her tenure at Salesforce, Shih architected the company's enterprise AI strategy, developing sophisticated business applications, including the "Gucci GPT" project for customer service automation. Her team built critical enterprise-grade AI infrastructure, including the Einstein AI Trust Layer, Prompt Builder, and Advanced RAG, focusing on security, compliance, and business-specific use cases.
"Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every business, empowering all to find success and own their future in the AI era," Shih stated in her announcement. Meta's enterprise push builds on impressive metrics, with its Llama models surpassing 600 million downloads and Meta AI reaching more than 500 million monthly active users.
The appointment leverages Shih's extensive enterprise technology experience, including founding Hearsay Systems (recently acquired by Yext) and her long-term interest in Perplexity. Under her leadership at Salesforce, the Service Cloud division grew from $5 billion to $8 billion in annual revenue.
Meta's business platform currently serves 200 million monthly active companies across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, providing a substantial foundation for enterprise AI deployment. The company plans to integrate these AI capabilities with its Reality Labs division, suggesting a future convergence of enterprise AI and immersive technologies.