Mark Zuckerberg has revealed Meta Platforms is set to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into constructing vast AI data centers, aiming to achieve superintelligence.
The move intensifies the social media giant's pursuit of advanced AI, a field where it has engaged in a fierce talent war for top engineers. Meta is among several major tech firms recently striking high-profile deals and offering multi-million-dollar pay packages to accelerate the development of machines capable of outperforming humans in various tasks.
Details shared by Mr Zuckerberg on his Threads social media platform indicate the first multi-gigawatt data centre, dubbed Prometheus, is anticipated to be operational by 2026. Another facility, named Hyperion, is designed to scale up to 5 gigawatts in the coming years.
The billionaire CEO stated: "We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan."
He also highlighted a report from industry publication SemiAnalysis, suggesting Meta is on course to be the first AI laboratory to bring a gigawatt-plus supercluster online.
Zuckerberg touted the strength in the company's core advertising business to justify the massive spending amid investor concerns on whether the expenditure would pay off.
"We have the capital from our business to do this," he said.
Meta shares were trading 1% higher. The stock has risen more than 20% so far this year.
The company, which generated nearly $165 billion in revenue last year, reorganised its AI efforts last month under a division called Superintelligence Labs after setbacks for its open-source Llama 4 model and key staff departures.
It is betting that the division would generate new cash flows from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools and smart glasses.
Top members of the unit have considered abandoning Behemoth, the company's most powerful open-source AI model, in favour of developing a closed alternative, the New York Times reported separately on Monday.
D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said Meta was investing aggressively in AI as the technology has already boosted its ad business by allowing it to sell more ads and at higher prices.
"But at this scale, the investment is more oriented to the long-term competition to have the leading AI model, which could take time to materialise," Luria said.
In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive talent raid for the Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub chief Nat Friedman, after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale.
Meta had raised its 2025 capital expenditure to between $64 billion and $72 billion in April, aiming to bolster the company's position against rivals OpenAI and Google.
