Latest news with #datacentres
Khaleej Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
Meta's Zuckerberg pledges hundreds of billions for AI data centres
Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that Meta Platforms would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive artificial intelligence (AI) data centres for superintelligence, intensifying his pursuit of a technology he has chased with a talent war for top engineers. The social media giant (META.O) is among the large tech companies that have struck high-profile deals and doled out multi-million-dollar pay packages in recent months to fast-track work on machines that could outthink humans on many tasks. Its first multi-gigawatt data centre, dubbed Prometheus, is expected to come online in 2026, while another, called Hyperion, will be able to scale up to 5 gigawatts over the coming years, Zuckerberg said in a post on his Threads social media platform. 'We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,' the billionaire CEO said. He also pointed to a report from industry publication SemiAnalysis that Meta was on track to be the first AI lab to bring a gigawatt-plus supercluster online. Zuckerberg touted the strength in the company's core advertising business to justify the massive spending amid investor concerns on whether the expenditure would pay off. 'We have the capital from our business to do this,' he said. Market value Meta shares were trading 1 per cent higher. The stock has risen more than 20 per cent so far this year. The company, which generated nearly $165 billion (Dh606 billion) in revenue last year, reorganised its AI efforts last month under a division called Superintelligence Labs after setbacks for its open-source Llama 4 model and key staff departures. It is betting that the division would generate new cash flows from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools and smart glasses. Top members of the unit have considered abandoning Behemoth, the company's most powerful open-source AI model, in favour of developing a closed alternative, the New York Times reported separately on Monday. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said Meta was investing aggressively in AI as the technology has already boosted its ad business by allowing it to sell more ads and at higher prices. But at this scale, the investment is more oriented to the long-term competition to have the leading AI model, which could take time to materialise, Luria said. In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive talent raid for the Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub chief Nat Friedman, after Meta invested $14.3 billion (Dh52.5 billion) in Scale. Meta had raised its 2025 capital expenditure to between $64 billion (Dh235 billion) and $72 billion (Dh264 billion) in April, aiming to bolster the company's position against rivals OpenAI and Google.
CNA
3 days ago
- Business
- CNA
ABB draws record orders on booming demand from AI data centres and US
ZURICH :Swiss engineering group ABB reported on Thursday its highest-ever quarterly order intake, helped by surging demand from the United States and for products used in data centres being built to support artificial intelligence. Orders in the United States, the company's biggest market, jumped 37 per cent in the second quarter, outpacing a 14 per cent rise in the group's orders overall, ABB said. Its shares were indicated 3.1 per cent higher in premarket activity on the Zurich stock exchange as ABB also said it expected further revenue growth in the third quarter. ABB said its orders for products for data centres increased in the double-digit percentage range during the quarter. They are being built to provide data storage and computational resources used for artificial intelligence, the company said. U.S. companies announced a series of big-ticket AI and energy investment pledges earlier this week, part of a push by President Donald Trump to maintain the country's edge in the booming technology sector. The demand put ABB in a good position for the rest of the year, said CEO Morten Wierod, despite ongoing uncertainties linked to rising tariffs. "ABB delivered an all-time-high order intake and improved operational performance," he said in a statement, adding that the current market environment was "robust." "We are on a good path towards a new record year," he added, pointing towards higher sales and profitability at the company, despite geopolitical uncertainties. For the three months to the end of June, ABB reported a 9 per cent rise in core operating income to $1.71 billion, beating analyst forecasts of $1.65 billion. Net income of $1.15 billion was better than the $1.12 billion expected by analysts in a company-supplied consensus. Revenue rose 8 per cent to $8.90 billion, ahead of forecasts for $8.72 billion.
Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Times
Meta to spend ‘hundreds of billions' on AI data centres
Mark Zuckerberg has said that Meta Platforms will spend 'hundreds of billions of dollars' on building data centres to power artificial intelligence, including one with a footprint almost the size of Manhattan. Its first 'multi-gigawatt' data centre, which will be called Prometheus, is set to come online next year, the billionaire technology executive wrote on Threads, his social media platform, while another, called Hyperion, would scale up to 5 gigawatts over 'several years'. 'We're building multiple more titan clusters as well,' he said. 'Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.' • Business live blog — today's latest news He pointed to a report from SemiAnalysis, an industry publication, that Meta was on track to be the first AI lab to bring a gigawatt-plus supercluster online. The American technology giant is 'focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry', Zuckerberg wrote. The world's largest technology companies have stepped up efforts to attract top engineers with multimillion-dollar pay packages to fast-track work on machines that could out-think humans on many tasks, part of an AI arms race that has gripped the industry. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, claimed that Meta Platforms had started to make 'giant offers' to a lot of OpenAI staff to beef up its own roster of engineers. The announcement from Meta came as President Trump joined executives from some of America's largest technology companies at a summit in Pittsburgh, ahead of an expected push in the coming weeks to make it easier for power-generating projects to connect to the grid, and also provide federal land on which to build the data centres needed to expand AI technology, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, had 'the capital from our business' to fulfil its data centre ambitions, Zuckerberg insisted. However, investors have become increasingly sensitive to the billions of dollars that the largest technology groups are ploughing into AI infrastructure, highlighted by the DeepSeek episode earlier this year. Advancements unveiled by the Chinese AI start-up wiped hundreds of millions off the market value of Meta Platforms, Amazon and Nvidia, the chipmaker. Zuckerberg's company, which has a market value of $1.8 trillion, was once seen as a leader in open-source AI models. The California-based business was co-founded as Facebook by Zuckerberg, who changed the name to Meta Platforms in 2021 to shift the company's focus to the metaverse. However, it is fighting the perception that it may have fallen behind in the AI race, after its initial set of Llama 4 large language models, released in April, fell short of performance expectations. It has also delayed the rollout of Behemoth, its main AI model, which had been scheduled for release in the same month.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Zuckerberg to spend billions on ‘Manhattan-sized' data centres
Mark Zuckerberg 's Meta is preparing to spend billions of dollars building 'Manhattan-sized' data centres to supercharge its artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The social media giant's first one-gigawatt (GW) data centre mega-project, dubbed Prometheus after the Greek titan, will come online next year with plans for 'multiple more titan clusters', the Facebook founder said. These one gigawatt (GW) data centres will consume more power than about 750,000 standard homes. Mr Zuckerberg said the company was planning to construct another, larger 5GW data centre, called Hyperion, 'over several years'. Meta's data centres will power the company's AI technology as it seeks to gain an edge over rivals including OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk's xAI. OpenAI is planning to spend about $500bn (£372bn) on its own Stargate data centre project. Silicon Valley giants have been buying up powerful computer processors and constructing new data centres in an effort to create and power so-called artificial general intelligence. To power this new AI infrastructure, they have been hunting out new energy sources amid an arms race to conquer the sector. In a post on the Meta-owned social media platform Threads, Mr Zuckerberg said he was planning to 'invest hundreds of billions of dollars' into computing to build superintelligence. He said Meta would be the first tech giant to bring a new 1GW data centre online. 'Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,' he said. Facebook told investors in May it planned to spend up to $72bn this year alone to fuel its data centre expansion plans. The Prometheus data centre is under construction in New Albany, Ohio, while its Hyperion site is planned for Louisiana. Technology analyst firm Semianalysis said Meta had started building a natural gas plant in Ohio 'when the local power grid couldn't keep up' with its plans. Mr Zuckerberg has been betting tens of billions of dollars on Meta's AI efforts after its attempts to gain ground on OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, fell flat. Earlier this year, the company delayed launching its latest new AI product, internally dubbed Behemoth. The Meta chief executive has personally embarked on a hiring blitz of AI experts and executives, allegedly offering bonuses of more than $100m to some new joiners.
ABC News
5 days ago
- ABC News
Calls for guidelines after Greater Western Water documents reveal potential data centre water usage
Data centres in Melbourne's north and west could consume enough drinking water to supply 330,000 residents each year, raising concerns they could lead to water shortages and limit new housing. Documents, released under Freedom of Information laws, reveal water company Greater Western Water is currently reviewing 19 applications from data centres for water usage, with the requests totalling 19,714 megalitres (ML) of drinking water each year. One proposal alone in the Mt Cottrell area could consume up to 3,926 ML of water per year — equivalent to the annual water usage of 66,000 Melburnians — with an estimated water usage of 321 litres per second during peak demand. The revelations have prompted calls for the Victorian government to introduce mandatory water efficiency standards for data centres, as well as make urgent upgrades to Melbourne's water infrastructure. Of the 19 data centre applications, five have been approved by Greater Western Water so far, including one centre near Tarneit which was granted permission to consume up to 734.4 megalitres per year. In comparison, the collective water consumption of 13 out of 15 existing data centres within Greater Western Water's service area was just 33.1 megalitres last year, according to the documents (two centres did not have a figure listed). The proposed water use of the 19 data centre applications is nearly 600 times that amount. Tim Fletcher, professor of urban ecohydrology at the University of Melbourne, said 19.7 gigalitres accounted for about 4 per cent of Melbourne's total water use, and would be a "substantial" increase if approved. Without critical upgrades to its water infrastructure, he said Melbourne's water security was increasingly at risk. "We're now at a point where the combination of climate change, a growing population, and growing industrial use — including these data centres — mean we're going to need substantial extra resources." Data centres play a vital role in the digital age, housing servers that are used for the processing and storage of data, and that also help train generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT. They require vast amounts of water to cool their servers, and also use significant amounts of energy, accounting for about 5 per cent of Australia's total electricity consumption — a figure that is expected to grow to 8 per cent by 2030. Ascelin Gordon, a senior lecturer in sustainability and planning at RMIT University, said strict sustainability standards needed to be placed on data centres, especially amid the boom in cloud computing and AI, with ChatGPT receiving about a billion requests from users every day. "Each of those queries involves electricity to run the data centres that the ChatGPT models run on, and the water associated with keeping them cool," Dr Gordon said. "And so, while any individual query is going to be quite small, the net effect of tens of millions of queries every day is significant." Melbourne's retail water corporations are Greater Western Water, Yarra Valley Water and South East Water, and they are responsible for assessing whether the network and broader system can meet demand, before approvals are granted. But there are no specific policies from the Victorian government addressing data centre water consumption. Dr Gordon said data centres should be required to use recycled or non-drinking water, and their large footprints made them an "ideal candidate" to capture, store and use rainwater. "Often they'll be quite large structures, so there would be the capacity to catch fairly significant amounts of rainwater from that, before drawing on potable mains [drinking] water," Dr Gordon said. In a statement to the ABC, Greater Western Water said it was exploring options that would allow them to sustainably support data centre development. "Large water users, such as data centres, are assessed against Melbourne's water supplies, growing population, changing economic needs and drying climate," Greater Western Water's general manager of strategy and partnerships Kessia Thomson said. "We're working with other water corporations and the data centres to better understand the amount of water they expect to use on an annual basis and support them to minimise their water usage while looking at supply alternatives such as recycled water." In its 2025 Annual Water Outlook, Melbourne Water stated that, on average, inflows into Melbourne's water storages were "not enough to supply our city's growing population". Victoria's desalination plant, which supplies up to 150 gigalitres of water a year, provides a crucial buffer against dry conditions. But Tim Fletcher said it was not a sustainable option due to its large energy consumption — particularly when compared to stormwater harvesting, which could collect about 280 gigalitres of excess run-off every year. He warned that failing to take action now to shore up Melbourne's long-term water resilience could lead to the government making "rushed decisions" in the future. He also said data centres could cause stress on local water infrastructure. Proposed water usage for each data centre was obtained from the FOI documents. In the 2023-24 financial year, the average daily water use of Melburnians was 163 litres per person, per day, according to Melbourne Water. This figure was used to calculate the equivalent usage of Melburnians. "These data centres are not just using very large volumes of water, but high rates of flow," Professor Fletcher said. "A pipe has a capacity to deliver a certain flow rate, and if you want to go above that, you either need to increase the pressure — which means you'll start having damage in the network — or you need to increase the pipe sizes." Melbourne's west is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia. It's also one of the most targeted by data centres due to its abundance of affordable land. In comparison to Greater Western Water's 19 applications, Yarra Valley Water, which provides water to 2 million residents in Melbourne's north and east, is reviewing just seven applications from data centres. South East Water, which extends down Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, has received two preliminary requests in the last 12 months. Last year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that data centres threatened to delay the construction of thousands of new homes in Sydney's Macquarie Park due to the strain on the area's water supply. The National Growth Areas Alliance, which represents local governments in outer suburban areas, said it was concerned Melbourne's west could follow a similar path. "It's not just the water consumption, but also the infrastructure needed to deliver that water, and the priority that [data centres] may be given over residential development, where Australia's real need is at the moment," Bronwen Clark, National Growth Areas Alliance CEO, said. There are currently more than 200 data centres across Australia. Property consultancy firm Knight Frank's 2025 Global Data Centres Report stated Australia was second only to the US as a top data centre investment location. The report also specifically identified Melbourne as a key hub due to its power and land availability, as well as a "more proactive" approach to approving data centre applications when compared to Sydney. Victoria has already attracted data centre investment from Amazon and Microsoft, and in June, the state government, alongside tech company NextDC, announced the development of a new data centre in Fishermans Bend, having invested $180 million into the $2 billion digital hub. A spokesperson for NextDC, which has multiple data centres in Melbourne, said the company had incorporated stormwater retention basins, vegetated swales, buffer strips and rain gardens in some of its sites, and the Fishermans Bend facility would comply with all water licensing requirements. "Water plays a crucial role as the primary medium for heat transfer in and out of the data halls, requiring significant infrastructure and planning," a NextDC spokesperson said. "We optimise water use through reuse, recycling and recovery, aiming to reduce our water dependency and environmental impact in the short and long-term." A Victorian government spokesperson said it was supporting data centre investment to create jobs and support the economy, while balancing water and energy resources. "All data centres have different water and energy needs and companies are getting smarter about how they can save energy and water," the spokesperson said. "This includes adopting new cooling technology and smarter software to use less energy and water overall." Dr Gordon said he understood why governments wanted to incentivise the data centre industry in Australia's cities, in order to generate economic growth. But he said they needed to think clearly about the potential long-term ramifications. "It's this trade-off between jobs and economic growth, and the impact on the environment," Dr Gordon said. "And the environment is the one that usually loses out."
