MongoDB CEO Chirantan “CJ” Desai is stepping down from the data platform to become chief enterprise platform officer for Meta, a move coming on the heels of the tech giant's launch of a version of its Muse AI agent for small businesses.

In a LinkedIn post, Desai said the “newly formed unit will focus on translating Meta’s AI leadership into transformative products for developers and businesses.”

Desai steps away from MongoDB after 11 months in the top role and will be replaced by Dev Ittycheria as interim president and CEO, effective immediately. Ittycheria returns to the position he held for more than 11 years at the firm, having stepped down in November 2025 to make way for Desai.

In his new role, Desai will report directly to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Zuckerberg wrote that, “CJ is an experienced enterprise leader with a track record of building full-stack software and delivering results in AI, infrastructure, business applications, and security. He has an extensive industry network that we look forward to partnering with.”

Meta’s CEO also referenced Desai’s previous roles as president for product and engineering at Cloudflare, which he assumed in 2024 before joining MongoDB, and his almost eight year-stint at ServiceNow. Desai was COO for the IT service management giant for more than four years, a role that included duties from his initial position as chief product and engineering officer.

Desai has also held prominent roles at EMC Corporation, Symantec, and Oracle.

Muse Tamagotchis and sketchy agentic security?

Desai gave further clues on LinkedIn regarding Meta’s ambitions with its new platform, writing: “Over the next few years, businesses of every size will rebuild how they innovate, sell, and serve customers, and run day-to-day efficiently using AI. Businesses will be able to reinvent entire workflows: from product development and customer engagement to decision-making and, ultimately, scale.

“Meta has a rare advantage in this transition: advanced AI models, large-scale infrastructure, and agents paired with an ecosystem that already helps millions of advertisers and hundreds of millions of businesses grow and succeed. Bringing those strengths together creates the opportunity to build an entirely new enterprise platform,” Desai added.

These efforts will likely revolve around Muse, described by Meta as a personal AI agent “that proactively helps with people’s goals and suggests ideas.” It runs on a dedicated virtual machine (VM) that plays host to both the agent and a user’s data.

While the agent was first introduced to the consumer market primarily through the Tamagotchi-like Charm device, Meta has debuted a version of Muse designed for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Released today (September 29), Muse for Small Business is a free/freemium tool that incorporates tools such as Dropbox, Slack, and Zoom into Muse’s agentic workflow.

Meta stressed in its announcement that “nothing publishes, sends, or spends without your approval.” That promise comes not 24 hours after reports Muse repeatedly gave out a user’s home address without their permission. The mishap apparently saw the agent arrange for a buyer to pick up an item at said address following a Facebook Marketplace sale, much to the user's surprise, opening up a potential can of worms for Desai in convincing bigger enterprises to trust their data with the tool.