Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is constructing a 5GW AI information heart

Meta is presently constructing out an information heart, referred to as Hyperion, which the corporate expects to produce its new AI lab with 5 gigawatts (GW) of computational energy, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a Monday submit on Threads.

The announcement marks Meta’s newest transfer to get forward of OpenAI and Google within the AI race. After beforehand poaching high expertise to run Meta Superintelligence Lab, together with former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former Protected Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross, Meta now appears to be turning its consideration to the huge computational energy wanted to coach frontier AI fashions.

Zuckerberg stated Hyperion’s footprint will likely be massive sufficient to cowl most of Manhattan. He additionally famous that Meta plans to carry a 1 GW tremendous cluster, referred to as Prometheus, on-line in 2026, making it one of many first tech corporations to take action.

Meta’s AI information heart build-out appears prone to make the corporate extra aggressive with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic in its capability to coach and serve main AI fashions. It’s attainable the trouble may additionally assist Meta entice further expertise, who could also be drawn to work at an organization with the computational must compete within the AI race.

Collectively, Prometheus and Hyperion will absorb sufficient power to energy hundreds of thousands of properties, which may pull important quantities of electrical energy and water from neighboring communities. One in every of Meta’s information heart tasks in Newton County, Georgia, has already brought on the water faucets to run dry in some residents’ properties, The New York Instances reported Monday.

Different AI information heart tasks might trigger comparable issues for individuals residing close to them. AI hyperscaler CoreWeave is planning an information heart growth that’s projected to double the electrical energy wants of a metropolis close to Dallas, Texas, in line with Bloomberg.

However, tech corporations are decided to construct out huge datacenter tasks to energy their AI ambitions. Different notable efforts embrace OpenAI’s Stargate challenge with Oracle and Softbank, in addition to xAI’s Colossus supercomputer.

The Trump administration has largely championed the tech business’s AI information heart buildout. President Donald Trump helped OpenAI announce its Stargate challenge, and has since spoken about efforts to broaden America’s AI infrastructure.

In a column featured in The Economist on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Vitality Chris Wright referred to as for the U.S. to “lead the following main energy-intensive frontier: synthetic intelligence.” He famous that AI transforms electrical energy into the “most dear output conceivable: intelligence,” and that the federal authorities would speed up the manufacturing of power derived from coal, nuclear, geothermal, and pure fuel.

With the assist of federal officers, the AI business appears poised to take in a lot of America’s power within the years to come back. Specialists estimate that information facilities may account for 20% of America’s power consumption by 2030, up from simply 2.5% in 2022. With out quickly elevated power manufacturing, that might trigger much more issues for communities.