Meta Platforms is making an unprecedented commitment to artificial intelligence, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing plans to invest between $60-65 billion in AI infrastructure during 2025.
The investment represents a significant increase from Meta's estimated $38-40 billion expenditure in 2024 and exceeds analysts' expectations of $50.25 billion for the year. Zuckerberg has declared 2025 "a defining year for AI" as the company positions itself against competitors like OpenAI and Google.
A cornerstone of this investment is the construction of a massive AI data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana. The $10 billion facility, spanning 4 million square feet on a 2,250-acre site, will be Meta's largest data center globally. Expected to be completed by 2030, the center will support Meta's ambitious AI initiatives, particularly the development of its Llama large language models. The Louisiana facility will bring approximately 500 direct jobs to the region and an estimated 1,000+ indirect positions.
Meta's investment includes plans to end 2025 with over 1.3 million graphics processing units (GPUs) and bring about 1 gigawatt of computing power online. The company is building a data center so large "it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," according to Zuckerberg.
The investment will support Meta's AI assistant, which Zuckerberg expects to serve more than 1 billion people in 2025, up from around 600 million monthly active users last year. It will also power the development of Llama 4, Meta's next-generation AI model released in April 2025, which features multimodal capabilities for processing text, images, and video.
This massive AI investment underscores Meta's strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence while maintaining its core social media business. The company faces pressure to show returns on these investments, with Zuckerberg acknowledging a "multiyear investment cycle" before Meta's AI products scale into profitable services.