Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has mentioned the social media big will spend a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} on constructing big AI knowledge centres within the US.
The primary multi-gigawatt knowledge centre, known as Prometheus, is predicted to return on-line in 2026, Zuckerberg mentioned.
He mentioned one of many websites would cowl an space practically the dimensions of Manhattan (59.1 sq km/22.8 sq miles).
Meta has invested closely in efforts to develop what it known as “superintelligence” – expertise that it mentioned may out-think the neatest people.
The corporate, which has made most of its cash from internet marketing, generated greater than $160bn in income in 2024.
In a publish on his social media platform, Threads, Zuckerberg mentioned Meta was constructing a number of multi-gigawatt clusters, and that one cluster, known as Hyperion, may scale as much as 5 gigawatts over a number of years.
“We’re constructing a number of extra titan clusters as properly. Simply one in all these covers a big a part of the footprint of Manhattan,” he added.
Prometheus will probably be inbuilt New Albany, Ohio, whereas Hyperion will probably be inbuilt Louisiana and is predicted to be totally on-line by 2030, Zuckerberg mentioned.
He mentioned Meta would “make investments a whole bunch of billions of {dollars}… to construct superintelligence” and that the centres had been given “names befitting their scale and influence”.
Karl Freund, principal analyst at Cambrian AI Analysis, instructed the BBC, “clearly, Zuckerberg intends to spend his strategy to the highest of the AI heap”.
“The expertise he’s hiring could have entry to a few of the greatest AI {Hardware} on this planet,” Freund added.
Meta shares had been buying and selling 1% greater following the announcement, Reuters information company reported. The inventory has risen greater than 20% up to now this yr.
There are at the very least 10,000 knowledge centres all over the world internet hosting the cloud – distant servers that retailer digital info – with most of them situated within the US, adopted by the UK and Germany.
AI-driven knowledge centres are extraordinarily power and water intensive. One examine estimates that these centres may eat 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally by 2027. A single AI question – for instance, a request to ChatGPT – can use about as much water as a small bottle you’d buy from the corner shop.
