Meta plans massive energy expansion for AI compute

On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Compute, a new initiative to bolster the company’s AI infrastructure. Under the initiative, Meta intends to drastically expand its energy footprint in the coming years. Zuckerberg stated that the company is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time. A gigawatt is a measurement of electrical power equivalent to a billion watts. “Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time. How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads. This initiative follows capital expenditure (Capex) projections announced last year, when the company made it known that it planned to spend big to build out capacity for its AI business. During an earnings call last summer, Meta CFO Susan Li noted that the company expects developing leading AI infrastructure to be a core advantage in developing the best AI models and product experiences.

To spearhead the project, Zuckerberg has appointed a leadership team with distinct roles:

• Santosh Janardhan: The head of global infrastructure, who joined the company in 2009, will lead work on technical architecture, the software stack, the silicon program, developer productivity, and building and operating Meta’s global datacenter fleet and network.
• Daniel Gross: The co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (alongside former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever) who joined Meta last year, will lead a new group responsible for long-term capacity strategy, supplier partnerships, industry analysis, planning, and business modeling.
• Dina Powell McCormick: A former government official who recently joined Meta as the company’s president and vice chairman, will be responsible for working with governments to help build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s infrastructure.

The initiative comes amid a broader industry race to secure AI-ready cloud environments. Peer companies are making similar moves; Microsoft has been partnering with AI infrastructure providers, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced the acquisition of data center firm Intersect in December. This expansion is occurring as one estimate reports that America’s electrical consumption could spike exponentially over the next decade, potentially rising from 5 GW to 50.

Why it matters

Meta is treating energy capacity as a strategic moat, signaling that the next phase of the AI arms race is as much about power generation and infrastructure as it is about software.