Meta's paid AI agent Hatch is coming, with Watermelon next

Meta plans to launch a paid consumer AI agent called Hatch within the next few weeks, and to release a new AI model called Watermelon in October, according to internal documents seen by The Information, The Decoder reported.

Hatch is built as a consumer version of the OpenClaw concept, the open-source project that lets people build AI agents to handle tasks like managing email, running a calendar, or browsing the web on their own. Getting Hatch to market is part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's push to turn Meta's AI spending into revenue that does not depend on advertising.

Meta is weighing a tiered pricing structure for Hatch, including a premium subscription running as high as $199.99 a month. The agent is designed to tap into outside services such as DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit, Yelp, and Outlook, and to offer a customizable dashboard with modules like a fitness tracker or a trip planner.

Meta has been building toward this for months. The company constructed virtual sandbox environments that replicate real sites, including DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit, Yelp, and Microsoft Outlook, to test the agent's ability to complete tasks before letting it near the real internet. Zuckerberg has said OpenClaw itself remains too complicated for most people, and that among the many agentic tools already on the market, there is hardly one he would hand to his own mother. Meta tried to recruit OpenClaw's creator, Peter Steinberger, who joined OpenAI instead. The company has also acquired the AI agent startup Manus for about $2 billion and picked up Moltbook, billed as the first social network built for AI agents.

Whether Watermelon becomes part of Meta's Muse model family or ships as a standalone product remains unclear. Meta has spent this year filling out that family: Muse Code, a coding agent priced aggressively against offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic; Muse Spark, an agentic and coding-focused model Meta has open-weighted; Muse Glimmer, a smaller open-weight model built to run on a laptop; and Muse Image, an image-generation model that started under the code name Mango.

Meta is also building a separate platform on WhatsApp that will let users plug in additional AI agents, extending the same agentic push into its messaging app.

The monetization pressure behind all of it is real. Meta's AI-related capital expenditure is projected to reach as much as $145 billion this year, and Zuckerberg has spent recent earnings calls trying to convince investors that Meta Superintelligence Labs, formed last year, is producing results worth that spending. Meta has already promised a personal AI agent for everyone within five years, a pledge that arrived alongside a sharp drop in the company's free cash flow. Hatch is the near-term product meant to start proving that promise can pay for itself.

• Hatch: paid consumer AI agent, launching within weeks, modeled on the OpenClaw concept
• Pricing under consideration: tiered subscriptions, premium tier up to $199.99 a month
• Integrations: DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit, Yelp, Outlook, plus a customizable dashboard
• Watermelon: new AI model due in October; unclear if it joins the Muse family or ships standalone
• Context: Meta's AI capex is projected at up to $145 billion this year, and it separately acquired Manus for about $2 billion

None of Hatch's launch date, its final pricing tiers, or Watermelon's relationship to the Muse family has been confirmed publicly by Meta. The internal documents describe a plan still in motion, not a finished product.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.