Meta to spend as much as $65 billion this yr to energy AI targets, Zuckerberg says

By Jaspreet Singh

(Reuters) -Meta Platforms plans to spend as a lot as $65 billion this yr to develop its AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated on Friday, aiming to bolster the corporate’s place towards rivals OpenAI and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) 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 knowledge heart that might be massive sufficient to cowl a big a part of Manhattan.

The corporate — among the many prime consumers of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s sought-after AI chips — goals to finish the yr 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 yr for AI,” Zuckerberg stated in a Fb (NASDAQ:META) publish. “This can be a large effort, and over the approaching years it can drive our core merchandise and enterprise.”

Massive expertise corporations 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 (TYO:9984) and Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) will kind a enterprise referred to as Stargate and make investments $500 billion in AI infrastructure throughout the U.S.

Earlier this month, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stated it was planning to speculate about $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to develop knowledge facilities, whereas Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) has stated its 2025 spending could be greater than an estimated $75 billion in 2024.

“Zuckerberg is signaling to the market he doesn’t wish to be second within the AI race. The timing of the announcement was doubtless impacted by Stargate, which created urgency round sending a message,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria stated.

Shares of Meta had been buying and selling 1% greater.

The corporate has emerged as an enormous participant within the AI race with its AI chatbot, Ray-Ban sensible glasses and open-source method, which units it other than rivals by permitting customers and most companies to make use of its Llama AI fashions at no cost.

Zuckerberg expects Meta’s AI assistant — out there throughout its providers — to serve greater than 1 billion individuals in 2025, up from round 600 million month-to-month lively customers it had final yr.

The $60 billion to $65 billion capital spending outlined for 2025 would mark a big bounce from the corporate’s estimated expenditure of $38 billion to $40 billion for final yr. Additionally it is above analysts’ estimate of $50.25 billion in 2025, in accordance with LSEG knowledge.

Meta is about to report its fourth-quarter outcomes on Jan. 29.