Facebook has given birth to a bunch of startups who want to change how businesses use tech

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Facebook makes nearly all of its money from ads. It's also begun investing in moonshot projects from virtual reality headsets to drones and laser communication systems.

One area it doesn't talk about: the $3.5 trillion enterprise tech market. That's how much money businesses spend on tech every year to run their companies and help employees do their jobs.

Although Facebook did recently introduce an experiemental Facebook At Work service which lets teams use Facebook to communicate and share stuff, it's not much of a focus for the company.

All of which might make it seem as if Facebook has been completely absent from that that $3.5 trillion market.

But it hasn't.

Facebook has actually helped cook up a whole bunch of startups that want to change the way enterprises use tech.

They were inspired by how Facebook uses technology to run its massive social network, often giving away the technology it invents for free, everything from data center hardware designs to databases.

Here's a look at some of the unusual enterprise startups from Facebook.