Meta Is Constructing Large Gigawatt Information Facilities as It Pours Billions Into AI

Meta’s AI spending spree continues. After reportedly offering tens (or in some circumstances, a whole lot) of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to lure away prime researchers from competing synthetic intelligence operations, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced via Threads that the corporate plans to construct a number of multi-gigawatt superclusters to ramp up its compute energy.

Zuckerberg stated the primary of the superclusters, referred to as Prometheus, will come on-line someday in 2026, with “a number of extra titan clusters” to observe. In keeping with Zuck, “Simply considered one of these covers a big a part of the footprint of Manhattan.” In keeping with a report from SemiAnalysis, an AI analysis agency, Prometheus is being inbuilt Ohio. One other considered one of its clusters, reportedly named Hyperion, is at the moment being inbuilt Louisiana and is predicted to go surfing in 2027.

A supercluster is an interconnected community of compute assets, together with graphics processing models (GPUs) or tensor processing models (TPUs), designed to do the form of large-scale knowledge processing wanted to coach AI fashions. Most energetic clusters constructed to assist AI efforts have a whole lot of megawatts {of electrical} energy capability. Meta’s gigawatt method would theoretically give it a leg up in compute capabilities, and Zuckerberg claims that Meta is on tempo to be the primary to convey a supercluster with gigawatt capability on-line.

Elon Musk may dispute that final achievement. Earlier this 12 months, he claimed that xAI, his AI undertaking behind Grok, was engaged on its next-generation data center and that it could be the “first gigawatt AI coaching supercluster.” So I suppose we’ve received ourselves an old style showdown to see who truly will get their knowledge heart on-line first.

Musk’s undertaking in Memphis, Tennessee, and Zuck’s in Ohio have one thing in frequent aside from the aim of reaching gigawatt capability for a supercluster knowledge heart: they each have some main environmental issues. As Musk has ramped up building in Memphis, the corporate reportedly brought in 35 portable methane gas turbines with out air permits to energy the undertaking. These generators, able to offering energy to a neighborhood of fifty,000 houses, might additionally emit as much as 130 tons of dangerous nitrogen oxides per 12 months, per NPR.

Meta’s undertaking in Ohio doesn’t look like a lot cleaner. In keeping with SemiAnalysis, Meta is constructing two separate 200MW on-site pure fuel vegetation to assist meet the vitality calls for of its knowledge heart. Whereas pure fuel vegetation are cleaner than options like coal (which the Trump administration has given AI firms the go-ahead to use if they want), they nonetheless produce a considerable amount of pollutants, together with nitrogen oxides linked to heightened cancer risks for uncovered communities.

Earlier this 12 months, Zuckerberg pledged to drop up to $72 billion on AI projects to compete with the OpenAIs and xAIs of the world. It may be good if he spent a fraction of that on ensuring these initiatives aren’t considerably harming the standard of life of people that have the misfortune of dwelling close to his knowledge facilities.