She will guide overall strategy with a particular focus on Meta’s AI infrastructure efforts
[SAN FRANCISCO] Meta Platforms has appointed a former top adviser to US President Donald Trump to a newly created senior management role focused on partnering with governments and investors on AI.
Dina Powell McCormick, who resigned from the US company’s board in December, is joining Meta this week as president and vice-chairman. She will guide overall strategy with a particular focus on Meta’s AI infrastructure efforts, according to a company blog post. The former Goldman Sachs executive will help build and maintain strategic capital partnerships, which Meta will rely on to fund massive data centre projects and propel its artificial intelligence efforts.
“Dina’s experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth,” Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
Powell McCormick is familiar with Meta. She joined the company’s board of directors last April but unexpectedly resigned just eight months later. She will report to Zuckerberg in her new role, a spokesperson confirmed.
Meta has invested aggressively in AI infrastructure as it pursues “superintelligence” – AI systems that can outperform humans at many tasks. The company is building several gigawatt-sized data centres around the country, including one in rural Louisiana that Trump said would cost US$50 billion.
Meta says it plans to scale that Louisiana data centre to five gigawatts, a structure Zuckerberg has described as nearly the size of Manhattan. And this month, Meta announced partnerships with energy companies to become one of the world’s biggest corporate buyers of nuclear power.
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Zuckerberg has pledged to spend US$600 billion on infrastructure over the next several years, and Meta has already sought tens of billions of US dollars in external financing to help pay for some of the projects.
Powell McCormick will help to oversee those efforts and secure more funding for future endeavours. She has decades of experience working in finance, including 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where she led the firm’s global sovereign investment banking business. She was most recently president and head of global client services at the investment firm BDT & MSD Partners. She is leaving that firm to join Meta but will remain on its advisory board, according to Gregg Lemkau, BDT & MSD Partners co-CEO.
Powell McCormick also has close ties to the Trump administration, which has taken a heightened interest in US infrastructure projects. She was deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, and also worked in the George W Bush administration. Her husband, Dave McCormick, is a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.
Meta is racing against major tech companies to develop AI-related infrastructure. Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Oracle are pledging tens of billions of US dollars to build massive data centre complexes. Elon Musk’s xAI is also spending aggressively and recently announced a third data centre site near Memphis, Tennessee, that includes a US$20 billion investment. BLOOMBERG
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