AI News Monitor

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed plans on Monday to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into artificial intelligence infrastructure, including the development of massive supercomputing clusters designed to train advanced AI models. The company’s first supercluster, named Prometheus, is set to go online next year, with even larger facilities in the works.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg framed the effort as a bid to establish Meta as the leader in AI research capabilities. “Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” he wrote. “I’m looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier.”

The announcement underscores Meta’s aggressive push to catch up to rivals like OpenAI and Google in the AI arms race. After facing criticism for the tepid reception of its Llama 4 models earlier this year, Zuckerberg has embarked on a hiring spree, recruiting top AI talent and forming a new division, Meta Superintelligence Labs. The company also recently invested $14 billion in Scale AI, a key data-labeling firm for AI training.

Among the projects in development is Hyperion, a sprawling data center expected to eventually deliver five gigawatts of power—enough to cover most of Manhattan, Zuckerberg claimed. Such facilities require vast amounts of electricity and water, raising concerns about their environmental and infrastructural impact. In Georgia, a Meta data center project has already strained local water supplies, leaving some residents without running water, The New York Times reported.

The AI industry’s voracious energy demands are set to grow exponentially. Experts warn that data centers could consume 20% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from just 2.5% in 2022. The federal government has largely supported the expansion, with U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently advocating for increased energy production—including from fossil fuels—to power AI development.

With Prometheus and Hyperion, Meta aims to secure the computational firepower needed to compete at the highest levels of AI. But as tech giants race to build ever-larger data centers, the strain on power grids and local communities may become an unavoidable challenge.

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