Mark Zuckerberg says Meta will build 'hundreds of gigawatts' of AI capacity over time
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new "top-level" initiative called Meta Compute.
- Zuckerberg said Meta aims to build "hundreds of gigawatts or more" of capacity over time.
- Meta executives Santosh Janardhan and Daniel Gross will lead the effort.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that the company is launching a new "top-level" initiative called Meta Compute, as it pours more money into the data centers and infrastructure powering its AI push.
Zuckerberg said Meta plans to build "tens of gigawatts" of capacity this decade and "hundreds of gigawatts or more" over time.
"How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.
The move signals that Zuckerberg views AI infrastructure as a key competitive advantage and is placing it under a dedicated unit that reports directly to him. Meta has said it plans to invest $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs, including AI data centers, by 2028.
The Department of Energy provides a few handy comparisons for the amount of power in one gigawatt: It's roughly half the output of the Hoover Dam, or the power of 2,627 Tesla Model 3s. Famously, the DeLorean, the iconic time machine in "Back To The Future Part II," needed 1.21 gigawatts to travel through time.
Santosh Janardhan, the company's head of infrastructure, and Daniel Gross, who joined Meta last year from AI startup Safe Superintelligence, will lead the new Meta Compute initiative.
The two executives will work closely with Dina Powell McCormick, Meta's newly appointed president and vice chairperson, who will focus on partnering with governments and sovereign entities to help build and finance infrastructure. Powell McCormick is a former deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump and spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Have a tip? Contact Pranav Dixit via email at pranavdixit@protonmail.com or Signal at 1-408-905-9124. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.