{"id":718522,"date":"2026-01-24T22:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T22:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/718522\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T22:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T22:57:10","slug":"down-arrow-button-icon-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/718522\/","title":{"rendered":"Down Arrow Button Icon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta<\/a> CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his social network Threads two weeks ago to announce<\/a> Meta Compute, a new \u201ctop-level initiative\u201d led by the company\u2019s most senior executives. In doing so, he reemphasized Meta\u2019s commitment to being an AI infrastructure behemoth\u2014and signaled that Meta has no intention of being an also-ran in the data center build-out race.<\/p>\n

The new organization is designed to secure the massive amounts of computing power\u2014measured in gigawatts, each of which could power hundreds of thousands of homes\u2014needed for Meta\u2019s drive to build AI models that lead to \u201csuperintelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,\u201d Zuckerberg wrote. \u201cHow we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new structure, Zuckerberg said longtime Meta executive Santosh Janardhan will continue to run the company\u2019s technical architecture, software, custom chips, and the day-to-day building and operation of Meta\u2019s vast data center network. Meanwhile, Daniel Gross\u2014one of Zuckerberg\u2019s high-profile AI hires from last summer, who was previously cofounder of Safe Superintelligence with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever\u2014will lead a new group focused on the long game: how much computing power Meta will need years from now, where it should be built, how to secure scarce chips and energy, and how to model the business impact of those bets.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg also announced a new Meta president and vice chair, Dina Powell McCormick, to work on developing partnerships with governments to finance and deploy data centers around the world. She was previously deputy national security advisor for strategy to President Trump.<\/p>\n

A growing perception that Meta is playing catch-up<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some Meta-watchers, the Meta Compute announcement was puzzling. After all, Meta is already an AI infrastructure giant. It has been a year since the company broke ground on its Hyperion site\u2014a 4-million-square-foot data center campus in northeast Louisiana that Zuckerberg famously told President Trump was roughly comparable to the size of lower Manhattan. Why, then, did Meta suddenly need to declare a new top-level organization to do what it already appears to be doing at historic scale?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was kind of a head scratcher, I didn\u2019t understand it at first,\u201d said Patrick Moorhead, founder and chief analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. He suggested the message about Meta Compute was really meant for investors and employees, signaling that Meta remains a serious contender in a club led by Microsoft<\/a>, Google<\/a>, Oracle<\/a>, OpenAI, and xAI. \u201cIt\u2019s Meta saying, \u2018Here is our strategy to roll this out,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rick Pederson of Bow River Capital agreed that the announcement responds to a growing perception among market analysts that Meta is playing catch-up with Google and OpenAI in the AI arms race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a way to discuss their focus, their intentionality surrounding the build-out of AI, computational capacity and infrastructure,\u201d he said. \u201cI would imagine that the other major hyperscalers have organizations something like this. But he took the opportunity to define it.\u201d Even though the company spent over $70 billion on AI infrastructure <\/strong>last year and plans to spend another $600 billion in the next two years, Google and OpenAI are spending at least that amount, he added. \u201cSo I think this gave Zuckerberg a chance to talk about not just the emphasis, but also how they\u2019re going to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Doubling down on infrastructure as an investment portfolio<\/p>\n

Some experts said they are not at all surprised by the move to announce Meta Compute. \u201cMeta is doubling down on infrastructure as an investment portfolio rather than simply a cost center,\u201d said Lane Dilg, former head of infrastructure policy at OpenAI and founder of boutique advisory firm Apeiro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the AI boom accelerates, Meta no longer sees data centers, GPUs, power contracts, and custom chips as mere plumbing for its products. It treats them as strategic assets\u2014more like a capital allocator than a tech company. In effect, Dilg said, Meta is positioning itself not just against other hyperscalers, but against the world\u2019s most sophisticated investment platforms.<\/p>\n

In that landscape, she explained, choosing Daniel Gross to co-lead the initiative makes sense. \u201cGross\u2019s experience building AI-native and agentic platforms matters, paired with his compute expertise,\u201d she said, pointing to the supercomputer he built with NFDG coinvestor Nat Friedman\u2014now Meta\u2019s head of products. Their effort became the Andromeda Cluster, a network of computing stockpiles totaling more than 4,000 GPUs, which they made available to their portfolio companies at below-market rates.<\/p>\n

Gross has dropped hints about his own recruiting push for Meta Compute, saying in a recent post on X<\/a> that he is hiring people with backgrounds in \u201cdeep learning, supply chains, commodities, semiconductors, sovereigns, energy, Excel, prediction markets, monitoring situations, etc.\u201d This suggests Meta is preparing to hedge against volatility in power and hardware costs\u2014and to make long-term bets shaped not just by technology, but by energy markets, supply chains, and geopolitics.<\/p>\n

Powell McCormick is also a key strategic hire for the Meta Compute effort, Umesh Padval, an experienced investor and board member, told Fortune. \u201cHyperscalers are now focused on how to get power and are investing in power projects financed by cash and debt,\u201d he said. \u201cWith her banking and political background, she would work with the Meta data center group to finance and get approvals to enable faster building of the compute capacity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Critics say Meta\u2019s capital-intensive model would drag down returns<\/p>\n

Not all are supportive of Meta\u2019s move, however. In a social media post shared the day Meta Compute was announced, \u201cBig Short\u201d investor Michael Burry wrote<\/a>: \u201cMeta gives in, throwing away its one saving grace. Watch ROIC crash.\u201d Burry\u2019s warning reflects a fear that Meta is abandoning its ability to generate enormous profits without sinking vast sums into physical infrastructure. By embracing gigawatt-scale data centers, he argues, Meta is shifting toward a far more capital-intensive model\u2014one that could drag down returns and make the company look more like a utility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But since Meta has already poured tens of billions into AI data centers and signaled hundreds of billions more in long-term infrastructure commitments, it looks like that train left the station long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his social network Threads two weeks ago to announce Meta Compute, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,32054,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-718522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-data-centers","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115952552655070185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}