Mark Zuckerberg spent all of 2024 telling investors that artificial intelligence will be the key to the future of his company, Meta. By 2025, he plans to put his money where his mouth is.
On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company expects its capital spending in 2025 to come in at around $60 billion to $65 billion, which is a big increase compared to Meta’s estimated spending of $38 to $40 billion in 2024.
Most of that money will build and expand data centers, warehouse-sized buildings that provide the computing power that powers Meta AI’s products and algorithms across its apps, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
“This is a huge effort, and in the coming years it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and expand America’s technological leadership,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page.
He noted that the company is expected to have more than 1.3 million units of graphics processing units, or GPUs, by the end of the year. A GPU is a type of computer chip that excels in the type of computing power required for AI systems. As AI-powered applications and products have grown in popularity in recent years, there is a shortage of GPUs across the industry, with tech companies big and small scrambling to buy as many as possible from companies like Nvidia.
And despite many layoffs and downsizing of the company’s workforce over the past three years, Mr. Zuckerberg said he planned to continue hiring “significantly” to expand the teams responsible for working on AI and related products.
Meta’s share price rose about 1.7 percent on Friday.
Silicon Valley’s tech giants are locked in an infrastructure arms race, as they compete to build the future of artificial intelligence. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all earmarked billions of dollars for data center and infrastructure projects, and show no signs of slowing down in spending in the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday, President Trump announced a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle called Stargate, which aims to invest at least one hundred billion dollars in American data centers. The group behind the project said it could invest up to half a billion dollars in Stargate over the next four years. Elon Musk, who runs a competing artificial intelligence startup, later disputed that figure.
Since Mr. Trump was elected in November, and Mr. Zuckerberg tried to mend their long-strained relationship. Mr. Zuckerberg visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago multiple times, donated and attended his inauguration and loosened speech restrictions on all Meta apps, an issue that conservatives have worked on for years.
Mr. Trump has promised to accelerate the production of American-made AI to compete with China for the world’s technological lead. On Thursday, he signed an executive order aimed at “removing barriers” to AI development in the United States.
Meta’s announcement on Friday could be seen as “a response to Stargate’s announcement earlier this week to remind investors of its leading position in AI,” RBC Capital Markets analysts wrote in a research note. Meta is scheduled to report its latest earnings next week, when details such as capital spending plans are usually announced to investors.
Meta has long signaled its intentions to invest heavily in data centers. The company received a $4.3 billion restructuring charge through 2023 after it decided to redesign many of its future data center projects to prepare for AI projects. It has expanded its data base to multiple locations around the world, from Odense, Denmark to Huntsville, Ala.
Mr. Zuckerberg said he plans to continue spending heavily on infrastructure to support what he believes will be the future of computing, powered by AI chatbots and other systems.
That also includes Llama, Meta’s open source AI technology that can be freely downloaded by independent software developers to power their own AI applications.
Last year, Meta announced that it would build its new data center in Richland Parish, La. The company said the building will be more than four million square feet, so much space that Mr. Zuckerberg said it would “cover a significant portion of Manhattan.” .”
“Let’s go build!” he wrote on his Facebook page, and added a flexing muscle emoji.
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