Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has stated the social media big will spend a whole lot of billions of {dollars} on constructing big AI information centres within the US.
The primary multi-gigawatt information centre, known as Prometheus, is anticipated to come back on-line in 2026, Zuckerberg stated.
He stated 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 known as “superintelligence” – expertise that it stated may out-think the neatest people.
The corporate, which has made most of its cash from internet advertising, generated greater than $160bn in income in 2024.
In a put up on his social media platform, Threads, Zuckerberg stated 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 certainly one of these covers a major a part of the footprint of Manhattan,” he added.
Prometheus can be inbuilt New Albany, Ohio, whereas Hyperion can be inbuilt Louisiana and is anticipated to be totally on-line by 2030, Zuckerberg stated.
He stated Meta would “make investments a whole lot of billions of {dollars}… to construct superintelligence” and that the centres had been given “names befitting their scale and impression”.
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 could have entry to a number of the finest AI {Hardware} on the 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% to date this 12 months.
There are not less than 10,000 information 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 information 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.
