Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once again boasted on Monday that he would invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" to build multiple ultra-large-scale AI data centers and fully promote the research and development of "super intelligence." He posted on social media,Meta is building multiple "gigawatt" level data center clusters, including the first cluster "Prometheus" expected to go online in 2026. At the same time, another cluster called "Hyperion" is also under construction and is expected to expand to 5 gigawatts in a few years..
For reference, the combined power generation capacity of the four units at the Vogtler Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in the United States, is approximately 4.5 GW.
Zuckerberg also compared again that the area occupied by a single giant data center is equivalent to most of Manhattan, New York.
(Source: Social Media)
This statement also has the intention of "stealing talents." Zuckerberg emphasized that Meta will have industry-leading computing power andResearchers’ “computing resources per person” will far exceed that of other institutions. He "looks forward to collaborating with top researchers to advance cutting-edge developments."
The Financial Associated Press has also previously reported that Zuckerberg personally reorganized the AI department due to anger over the performance of this year's Llama 4 model.
In addition to setting up a new "super intelligence laboratory", Zuckerberg also personally waved his checkbook to recruit top AI talents. Previously, it was reported that Meta was willing to offer salary packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars that shocked the industry in order to poach core AI talents from competitors such as Apple and OpenAI.
The new unit is currently co-led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub head Nat Friedman. In order to poach Alexandr Wang, Meta also invested US$14.3 billion in Scale and obtained 49% of the shares.
Zuckerberg emphasized again,The company's strong advertising business provides capital for this aggressive spending. He also quoted a report from SemiAnalysis, a chip industry analysis organization, saying that Meta is expected to become the first laboratory in the world to deploy a super cluster exceeding 1 gigawatt. (Note: Musk has previously stated that xAI’s Memphis Colossus 2 will become the first gigawatt-level computing cluster)
It is worth mentioning thatAlthough Zuckerberg is happy to throw money, Meta's money-making ability is not "unique" among American technology giants.. The company has previously raised its capital expenditure guidance for 2025 to US$64 billion to US$72 billion, which is similar to Microsoft (US$80 billion) and Google (US$75 billion).
Meta's stock price rose about 1% after the news was released, and its cumulative increase during the year exceeded 24%.
"Anxiety about water and electricity" is quietly heating up
As technology giants frequently build gigawatt-level data centers, an increasingly obvious problem has begun to emerge:Multiple reports on Monday pointed out that data centers are not only extremely power-hungry, but also have a huge impact on local water resources.
For example, a data center Meta built in Newton County, Georgia, last year hasAs a result, the faucets in surrounding residents' homes have been dry for many years.. A spokesman for the industrial park where the Meta facility is located said no studies had been conducted on the potential impact of groundwater wells before the development and he believed "it could just be a coincidence."
According to Mike Hopkins, executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority,Meta's data centers typically consume about 500,000 gallons of water per day, accounting for about 10% of the county's total water use.Hopkins also revealed that nine companies have applied to build data centers in Newton County in recent months. In some applications, water consumption is as high as 6 million gallons per day, which has exceeded the county's total water consumption.
Water issues similar to those in Newton County are occurring in other data-building areas, including Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and other places. Around Phoenix,Some homebuilders have paused construction as data center drought worsens. In Colorado, data center water use has also become a focus of renegotiations of the Colorado River Water Treaty.
at the same time,CoreWeave's data center expansion project near Dallas, USA, will directly lead to a doubling of power demand in the city where it is located..
AI’s urgent demand for basic resources also has an impact on U.S. energy policy. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright
A signed article published on Monday stated that AI converts electricity into the most valuable output - intelligence, so the country is accelerating the production of all base load energy, including coal, nuclear energy, geothermal energy, natural gas, etc.