Meta Platforms is preparing to launch a paid autonomous AI agent named Hatch and follow it with a new foundational model dubbed Watermelon in October, according to internal documents reviewed by The Information. The initiative marks a strategic shift for CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is now scrambling to offset billions in capital expenditures by generating recurring subscription revenue rather than relying solely on targeted advertising.
Hatch, built on the internal OpenClaw architecture, operates as a consumer-facing task engine. Rather than offering it as a free loss-leader, Meta is weighing a multi-tiered subscription model topping out at $199.99 per month. To justify the enterprise-grade price tag, the agent directly hooks into third-party services—including DoorDash, Etsy, Yelp, Reddit, and Outlook—to execute end-to-end transactions, scheduling, and workflow automation across customizable dashboards.
Meta is simultaneously engineering an agent ecosystem on WhatsApp, opening the door for third-party bots to live inside its core messaging rail. While it remains unconfirmed whether Watermelon will sit inside Meta's Muse family or stand alone, the broader strategy is unmistakable: the era of open-weight freebies is yielding to aggressive, direct monetization. Asking consumers and solopreneurs to shell out $200 a month will quickly reveal whether standalone agentic execution is a viable business model or just another expensive infrastructure experiment.