Meta Platforms is making an unprecedented push into artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg committing up to $65 billion in AI investments throughout 2025. This massive financial commitment represents a significant increase from the company's estimated $38-40 billion expenditure in 2024 and signals Meta's determination to secure a leading position in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
A cornerstone of this investment is the completion of Meta's $10 billion AI-optimized data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana. This facility, which broke ground in December 2024, will be Meta's largest data center globally, spanning approximately 4.3 square miles—an area that would cover a significant portion of Manhattan. The data center will support 500 direct jobs with salaries at least 150% above the state average and create over 1,000 indirect jobs in the region.
In a major organizational shift, Meta has also established a new 'Superintelligence' lab, which as of June 30, 2025, has been formalized as 'Meta Superintelligence Labs.' This division is led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI, who joined Meta following a $14.3 billion investment in his company. The lab's ambitious goal is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can match or exceed human performance across a wide range of tasks.
To staff this elite research unit, Zuckerberg has personally recruited top AI talent, offering seven to nine-figure compensation packages to researchers from leading competitors including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. The team of approximately 50 specialists will focus on advancing Meta's AI capabilities beyond its current Llama 4 models, which were released in April 2025 but have faced criticism for falling short of competitors' offerings in certain areas.
Meta's aggressive AI strategy comes amid intensifying competition in the sector. The company's Llama 4 family of models—including Scout, Maverick, and the still-in-training Behemoth—represents Meta's attempt to catch up with rivals like OpenAI's GPT models and Google's Gemini. However, the establishment of the Superintelligence lab indicates Zuckerberg's dissatisfaction with Meta's current AI progress and his determination to leapfrog competitors in the race toward more advanced AI systems.
Industry analysts note that Meta's massive investment reflects the escalating stakes in AI development, with major tech companies pouring unprecedented resources into infrastructure and talent acquisition. As these investments accelerate the pace of AI advancement, questions about the safety, ethical implications, and economic impact of increasingly powerful AI systems are becoming more urgent for policymakers and society at large.