Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has mentioned the social media big will spend a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} on constructing enormous AI knowledge centres within the US.
The primary multi-gigawatt knowledge centre, referred to as Prometheus, is anticipated to come back on-line in 2026, Zuckerberg mentioned.
He mentioned one of many websites would cowl an space practically the scale of Manhattan (59.1 sq km/22.8 sq miles).
Meta has invested closely in efforts to develop what it referred to 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 submit on his social media platform, Threads, Zuckerberg mentioned Meta was constructing a number of multi-gigawatt clusters, and that one cluster, referred to as Hyperion, may scale as much as 5 gigawatts over a number of years.
“We’re constructing a number of extra titan clusters as effectively. Simply one among these covers a big a part of the footprint of Manhattan,” he added.
Prometheus shall be in-built New Albany, Ohio, whereas Hyperion shall be in-built Louisiana and is anticipated to be absolutely 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 affect”.
Karl Freund, principal analyst at Cambrian AI Analysis, instructed the BBC, “clearly, Zuckerberg intends to spend his solution to the highest of the AI heap”.
“The expertise he’s hiring can have entry to among the greatest AI {Hardware} on this planet,” Freund added.
Meta shares have been buying and selling 1% larger following the announcement, Reuters information company reported. The inventory has risen greater than 20% to this point this 12 months.
There are no less than 10,000 knowledge centres all over the world internet hosting the cloud – distant servers that retailer digital info – with most of them positioned within the US, adopted by the UK and Germany.
AI-driven knowledge centres are extraordinarily vitality 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.
