Post-proprietary WhatsApp chat app changed the business API policy this week to ban general purpose chatbots from its platform. The move will likely affect assistants from WhatsApp-based companies such as OpenAI, Perplexity, Khosla Ventures Louziaand powered by General Catalyst Poke.
The company has added a new section to address “AI providers” in its business API terms, focusing on general-purpose chatbots. The terms, which will take effect on January 15, 2026, say Meta will not allow AI model providers to distribute their AI assistants on WhatsApp.
Providers and developers of artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies, including but not limited to large language models, AI generation platforms, general purpose AI assistants or similar technologies, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion (“AI Providers”), are strictly prohibited from accessing or using the WhatsApp Business Solution, either directly or indirectly, for the purpose of providing. offer, sell or otherwise make available such technologies when such technologies are the primary (and not incidental or ancillary) functionality available for use, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.
Meta confirmed this move to TechCrunch and clarified that this move does not affect businesses that use AI to serve customers on WhatsApp. For example, a travel company running a bot for customer service will not be banned from the service.
Meta’s reasoning behind this move is that the WhatsApp Business API is designed for businesses serving customers rather than acting as a chatbot distribution platform. The company said that while it built the API for business-to-business use cases, in recent months, it saw an unforeseen use case for its general-purpose chatbot service.
“The purpose of the WhatsApp Business API is to help businesses provide customer support and send related updates. Our focus is on supporting the tens of thousands of businesses that create these experiences on WhatsApp,” a Meta spokesperson said in a comment to TechCrunch.
Meta said the new chatbot use cases put too much strain on its system with increased message volume and required a different kind of support that the company wasn’t ready for. The company prohibits use cases that do not fall within the “intended design and strategic focus” of the API.
The move will effectively make WhatsApp unavailable as a platform for distributing AI solutions such as assistants or agents. It also means that Meta AI is the only assistant available in the chat app.
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Last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on WhatsApp and earlier this year, Perplexity has released its own bot in the chat app to tap into our user base of over 3 billion people. Both bots could answer queries, understand media files, answer questions about them, respond to voice memos, and create images. This probably created a lot of message volume.
However, there was a bigger issue for Meta. WhatsApp’s Business API is one of the main ways the chat app makes money. It charges businesses based on different messaging standards such as marketing, utilities, authentication and support. As there was no provision for chatbots in this API design, WhatsApp was unable to charge for them.
During Meta’s Q1 2025 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg he pointed out that business messages are a great opportunity for the company to generate revenue.
“Right now, the vast majority of our business is advertising on Facebook and Instagram feeds,” he said. “But WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly [active users]with more than 100 million people in the US and growing rapidly there. Messenger is also used by more than a billion people every month, and there are now as many messages sent every day on Instagram as on Messenger. Business messaging should be the next pillar of our business.”
