Meta to spend as much as $65 billion this 12 months to energy AI objectives, Zuckerberg says, ETCFO
Meta Platforms plans to spend as a lot as $65 billion this 12 months to increase its AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned on Friday, aiming to bolster the corporate’s place towards rivals OpenAI and Google within the race to dominate the expertise.
As a part of the funding, Meta will ramp up hiring for synthetic intelligence roles and construct a greater than 2-gigawatt information middle that may be massive sufficient to cowl a big a part of Manhattan.
The corporate – among the many high consumers of Nvidia’s sought-after AI chips – goals to finish the 12 months with over 1.3 million graphics processors and plans to result in 1 GW of computing energy on-line in 2025.
“This can be a defining 12 months for AI,” Zuckerberg mentioned in a Fb submit. “This can be a huge effort, and over the approaching years it would drive our core merchandise and enterprise.”
Huge expertise companies have been investing tens of billions of {dollars} to develop AI infrastructure after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Meta’s announcement comes simply days after U.S. President Donald Trump introduced that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle will type a enterprise known as Stargate and make investments $500 billion in AI infrastructure throughout the U.S.
Earlier this month, Microsoft mentioned it was planning to take a position about $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to develop information facilities, whereas Amazon.com has mentioned its 2025 spending could be larger than an estimated $75 billion in 2024.
“Zuckerberg is signaling to the market he doesn’t need to be second within the AI race. The timing of the announcement was seemingly impacted by Stargate, which created urgency round sending a message,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria mentioned.
Shares of Meta have been buying and selling 1% larger.
The corporate has emerged as a giant participant within the AI race with its AI chatbot, Ray-Ban sensible glasses and open-source strategy, which units it aside from rivals by permitting shoppers and most companies to make use of its Llama AI fashions free of charge.
Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI assistant – out there throughout its companies – to serve greater than 1 billion individuals in 2025, up from round 600 million month-to-month energetic customers it had final 12 months.
The $60 billion to $65 billion capital spending outlined for 2025 would mark a big soar from the corporate’s estimated expenditure of $38 billion to $40 billion for final 12 months. It’s also above analysts’ estimate of $50.25 billion in 2025, in response to LSEG information.
Meta is ready to report its fourth-quarter outcomes on Jan. 29.
