Mark Zuckerberg Bets on AI With Meta’s Prometheus Data Hub in Ohio

Meta Platforms Inc. chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled a massive new program of data centres to support his ambitious artificial intelligence (AI) plan, the first of which, nicknamedPrometheus, should come online in 2026.

Ohio Prometheus, announced in a post on Threads, Meta (formerly Facebook) social media platform, will be the first of what Zuckerberg said would be a series of titan clusters, or colossal data centre complexes that are expected to satisfy the tremendous energy and computational requirements of next-generation AI models:Prometheus is the first of series of titan clusters, which are large complexes of data centres designed to accommodate the tremendous energy and computational requirements of the next generation of AI models. These installations he coined as the multi-gigawatt clusters and they are one of the largest of their kinds in the world.

Also Read: Taiwan Closes Major Bridge During Military Drill to Block Potential Chinese Advance on Taipei

The announcement highlights how Meta is increasingly investing in AI infrastructure, which is one of its strategies of creating superintelligence, or advanced forms of AI that may possibly surpass humans in a variety of tasks. Zuckerberg adds that the company plans to spend“hundreds of billions of dollars on these initiatives and more”, which means that it plans to make a long-term investment and win the world race of AI development.

It is important to mention that the size of the infrastructure is unprecedented. Construction of the largest data centre by Meta is already well underway in Richland Parish in Louisiana, which spans almost the area equivalent to Manhattan. Comparatively, majority of the current data centres are running on few hundred megawatts. The next generation facilities planned by Meta are expected to break the one-gigawatt mark, or 900,000 home-years of energy, a new extreme in data processing capacity.

Meta is rapidly growing as its competitors in the industry are increasing. Among other large tech companies making heavy investments in data centres, to meet the rapidly growing computation demands of generative AI models, are OpenAI and Oracle. SemiAnalysis analyst group anticipated that Meta can become the first to exceed one gigawatt of capacity in its supercluster.

Also Read: Shubhanshu Shukla Returns to Earth After Historic Space Mission

The new interest in AI by Zuckerberg is a reaction to frustrations he experienced before within the company because of its performance in this area. In the last few months, he has hustled together a remarkable troop of AI talent, recently lured it away rival outfits like OpenAI and Google DeepMind. One of the high-profile hires is Alexandr Wang, co-founder of Scale AI, who has been installed as Meta Chief AI Officer after it invested $14.3 billion in his company to grab a 49 per cent stake.

Additional prominent hires are former CEO of GitHub Nat Friedman, an AI entrepreneur Daniel Gross, and ex-Apple engineer Ruoming Pang, who apparently received an employment package worth more than 200 million dollars to work at Meta.

These large capital expenses have not managed to stem positive revenue growth at Meta, whose core advertising business across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger remains important enough to enable the firm to be able to finance its AI agenda out of internal sources.

Also Read: Ukraine PM Shmyhal Resigns in Major Government Reshuffle; Svyrydenko Named Economy Minister Successor