Meta unveils ‘Meta Compute’ initiative to build AI infrastructure

[BENGALURU] Meta has announced its “Meta Compute” initiative to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and oversee the social media company’s global fleet of data centres and supplier partnerships in its pursuit of superintelligence.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday (Jan 12) that the new initiative will be co-led by Meta’s head of global infrastructure Santosh Janardhan and Daniel Gross.

Janardhan will continue to manage Meta’s technical foundations and data centre operations, while Gross will lead a new group dedicated to strategic capacity planning and business partnerships, Zuckerberg said.

They will collaborate closely with Dina Powell McCormick, who has joined Meta as president and vice-chairman, he said in a post on his social media platform Threads.

Meta is accelerating investments in frontier AI and personal superintelligence, a theoretical milestone where machines outthink humans. Zuckerberg is going all in to build data centres for those projects, as well as the energy capacity to support them.

“Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” he said.

Under the new effort, the enormous amount of computing power target will consume as much electricity as small cities or even small countries at a time when concerns around the exploitation of resources like water have risen.

Meta has struggled in Silicon Valley’s AI race after its Llama 4 model met with a poor reception. The Facebook parent committed as much as US$72 billion in 2025 capital spending.

Meanwhile, Big Tech companies are looking to secure long-term electricity supplies as AI and data centres increase US power demand for the first time in two decades.

To that end, Meta struck 20-year agreements to buy power from three Vistra nuclear plants in the US heartland and develop projects with two companies hoping to build small modular reactors. REUTERS