Meta will pour “hundreds of billions of dollars” into a fleet of US data centres as it looks to build up its AI capabilities, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The social media giant’s plan involves several so-called ‘titan clusters’, each designed to power the company’s push towards what it describes as ‘superintelligence’ – AI capable of out-thinking the smartest humans. Zuckerberg said one forthcoming facility would span an area not too far from the size of the island of Manhattan in New York.
Prometheus will be the first multi-gigawatt site to be constructed under Meta’s new plans, and it’s scheduled to come online in New Albany, Ohio, in 2026. It will be joined by Hyperion, a Louisiana-based cluster that could scale to five gigawatts and is expected to be fully operational by 2030.
“We’re building multiple more titan clusters as well,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads, adding that the projects have been given “names befitting their scale and impact”.
Meta’s willingness to splash to cash to win the AI race
Meta is willing to dig deep and spend to win the AI race, with the company not only committing to spend ‘hundreds of billions’ of dollars on new data centres, but also is in the midst of a fierce talent war. According to WIRED, the firm has offered some AI specialists pay packages worth up to $300 million over four years, while OpenAI’s Sam Altman noted that some of his engineers had been offered $100 million sign-on bonuses – Meta disputes both figures.
“These statements are untrue – the size and structure of these compensation packages have been misrepresented all over the place,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone insisted. “Some people have chosen to greatly exaggerate what’s happening for their own purposes.”
Despite potential misrepresentation of the size of some people’s packages, it’s undeniable Meta has an appetite for poaching top talent. That includes Ruoming Pang, who recently announced he was joining Meta from Apple, where he was Head of AI Models. That will be a huge blow for Apple which has lagged behind other tech giants in the AI race, despite Siri ushering in the age of digital assistants back in 2011.
