- Meta is set to almost double its AI infrastructure expenses
- Meta seems to keep up with large AI -rivals
- AI -Infrastructure comes to a huge environmental cost
As governments and private companies around the world announces huge AI infrastructure plans, Meta has become the latest to advertise a larger expenditure spree.
In recent quarterly financial results, the company announced an expansion of the cost of around $ 66 – $ 72 billion – more than doubling its expenses for data centers and servers.
“We expect that developing leading AI infrastructure will be a core advantage by developing the best AI models and product experiences, so we expect to ramp our investments significantly in 2026 to support this work,” said Susan Li, Meta CFO, under the company’s earnings call.
Expensive infrastructure
The move comes shortly after Meta’s shares jumped more than 10%, thanks to largely advertising business, where AI-powered ad creation tools allow users to generate video ads from images, which helps to encourage better conversion frequency.
Meta says it expects a similar leap in the expenses and in the future in 2026, as the company appears “aggressive [pursue] Opportunities to bring additional capacity online to meet the needs of [its] Artificial intelligence efforts and business operations. “
Meta is not alone as Microsoft has also announced plans to spend billions on AI and announces over $ 30 billion capital investment as it expands the AI capacity in an attempt to follow them as Amazon – which in itself is set to spend up to $ 111 billion in 2025, the majority goes against technology and infrastructure.
This infrastructure, which primarily refers to data centers and large servers, is expensive in more ways than one. It would be uncomfortable to talk about the cost of data center without mentioning the huge environmental costs associated with the infrastructure.
Data centers consume huge amounts of energy and water – depletion of local water sources and puts tremendous load on already worked energy style.
Local communities are severely affected by nearby data center structures – with data centers in Texas, using 463 million liters of water as residents are asked to take shorter showers to offset the use.
In Georgia, residents living near Meta’s own data center can no longer drink their water, with taps running dry thanks to added sediment in local wells. The cost of municipal water is skyrocket and the county water commission may be subjected to a deficiency.
Via: Techcrunch
