As big as Manhattan: Zuckerberg wants to build huge AI data centers

Data centers that could fill the core of Manhattan – with this vision, the Facebook-owned Meta group aims to become a leader in artificial intelligence. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the online platform Threads that they will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" in this. Meta has so far budgeted more than $70 billion in investments for this year.

He announced that the first new plant, called Prometheus, would go online in 2026. Another, called Hyperion, will consume up to 5 gigawatts of energy in its final expansion phase in a few years. Experts estimate that the energy required could power more than four million average US households for a year.

According to media reports, Zuckerberg is dissatisfied with the pace at which Meta is progressing in developing powerful artificial intelligence. In recent weeks, the company has spent heavily to attract top experts in the industry. Among them is a senior AI developer from Apple, whom Meta lured with a $ 200 million compensation package, according to the financial service Bloomberg. Zuckerberg also hired 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, a co-founder of Scale AI, as its AI chief. Meta also acquired a 49 percent stake in the company for $14.3 billion.

Meta aims to compete at the forefront of artificial intelligence with, among others, ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Elon Musk's AI company xAI also plans to spend billions of dollars on data centers. xAI is developing the AI chatbot Grok, which recently caused a scandal with anti-Semitic remarks. Following the fierce criticism, xAI attributed this to a botched update and apologized.

According to the New York Times, Meta is considering abandoning its current open-source approach to its most powerful AI model to date, called Behemoth, which exposes the software code behind it. This would be a reversal of Meta's insistence that open-source AI programs would ultimately prevail over the competition.