Meta will invest hundreds of billions of dollars to build the world's largest data center, with a "supercluster" capacity potentially exceeding 1 gigawatt

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated on Monday that the company will invest hundreds of billions of dollars to build several large data centers to support its artificial intelligence development, with the first data center expected to be operational next year.

Zuckerberg posted on his social platform Threads on Monday:

"We have named the first data center Prometheus, which is expected to go live in 2026. We are also building more giant clusters."

He referred to large data center parks. Another data center named Hyperion is expected to scale up to 5 gigawatts in the coming years.

Zuckerberg described the data centers under construction as "multi-gigawatt 'clusters'," which will be among the largest data centers in the world. Meta is building its largest facility in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which Zuckerberg claims is nearly the size of Manhattan.

Currently, most data centers have a capacity of only a few hundred megawatts, while some AI companies and large tech firms, including OpenAI and Oracle, are planning to build data centers capable of handling several gigawatts of capacity. In his post, Zuckerberg cited SemiAnalysis's view that Meta is expected to become the first company in the world to have a "super cluster" with over 1 gigawatt of capacity.

Following this news, Meta's stock price rose by 1.3% at one point, later retreating to a 0.71% increase, closing at $722.57.

In his post on Monday, Zuckerberg reiterated that the company will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" in data center capacity construction to create super intelligence. In response to investor concerns about the return on spending, Zuckerberg defended the large investment by emphasizing the strong performance of the company's core advertising business.

"We have the funds from the business to support this plan."

Currently, most of Meta's revenue comes from advertising on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, with the company's sales continuing to achieve year-on-year growth. Data shows that Meta's revenue was nearly $165 billion last year.

D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria stated that Meta is actively investing in AI because this technology has enhanced the advertising business by helping the company sell more and higher-priced ads.

"But at this scale, this investment is more about long-term competition for leading AI models, which may take time to realize."

Media reports indicate that Zuckerberg has been heavily investing in infrastructure and talent due to dissatisfaction with Meta's past AI achievements. In April of this year, Meta stated that its spending could reach $72 billion, focusing on artificial intelligence and data centers In the past few weeks, Zuckerberg has personally assembled a team of experts aimed at achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

The new Meta Superintelligence Labs team includes researchers poached from OpenAI, Google's DeepMind, and other top artificial intelligence companies. Recently, Meta acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI (valued at $14.3 billion) and appointed the company's co-founder Alexandr Wang as Chief AI Officer. Zuckerberg also successfully invited former GitHub head Nat Friedman, AI startup founder Daniel Gross, and Ruoming Pang from Apple to join, with the latter's compensation exceeding $200 million