Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday the creation of Meta Compute, a top-priority initiative aimed at building tens of gigawatts of computing infrastructure this decade, with plans to scale to hundreds of gigawatts in the future.
The ambitious project comes as Meta races to maintain its position in Silicon Valley’s intensifying artificial intelligence (AI) race, particularly after its Llama 4 model received a lukewarm reception. The company committed up to $72 billion in capital spending for 2025.
“How we engineer, invest, and form partnerships to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage for Meta,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, emphasizing the company’s goal to “deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people around the world.”
The initiative will be led by Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of global infrastructure and co-head of engineering, and Daniel Gross. Janardhan will continue overseeing the company’s technical architecture, software stack, silicon program, developer productivity, and the construction and operation of Meta’s global data center fleet and network.
Gross will head a newly formed group focused on long-term capacity strategy, supplier partnerships, industry analysis, planning, and business modeling. Both will work closely with Dina Powell McCormick, who recently joined Meta as president and vice chairman.
Powell McCormick’s appointment represents a significant addition to Meta’s leadership team. The veteran banking executive, who previously served as an adviser to President Trump during his first administration, will help “guide the company’s overall strategy and execution” and partner with the compute and infrastructure teams to ensure Meta’s multibillion-dollar investments achieve their goals.
According to Zuckerberg, Powell McCormick will have “a particular focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure.”
President Trump praised the appointment on Truth Social, calling Powell McCormick “a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction.”
Powell McCormick has served on Meta’s board of directors since April 2025, where she has been “deeply engaged” in the company’s pursuit of frontier AI and personal superintelligence. Most recently, she served as vice chair, president and head of global client services at merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners.
Powell McCormick is married to Sen. David McCormick, the Republican junior senator from Pennsylvania who was elected in 2024, adding another connection between Meta and Republican circles alongside UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump associate who joined Meta’s board last year.
“Meta is positioning compute itself as the platform. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Meta Compute treats compute as a first-class strategic asset,” said Mitch Ashley, vice president and practice lead, DevOps and AppDev, at The Futurum Group. What stands out is the explicit separation of near-term execution and long-range capacity strategy, paired with government and sovereign partnerships. That structure reflects where AI-driven development and deployment are headed: success depends as much on energy, capital, and geopolitical alignment as it does on models and algorithms.”
Meta’s AI investment is the latest by a Big Tech company to expand infrastructure. Earlier, SB Energy said it received $1 billion in funding from OpenAI and SoftBank Group to expand its data center operations. The infrastructure company will also construct and operate OpenAI’s 1.2 gigawatt data center in Milam County, Texas.
“Hyperscaler CAPEX may look aggressive, but it’s only a fraction of their available cash, and it’s being deployed with urgency,” FiberLight CEO Bill Major said in an email. “Five-year infrastructure plans have consolidated into three-year mandates as the global AI race intensifies.”
Worldwide IT expenditure is expected to grow 9% in 2026, following strong 12% expansion in 2025, driven primarily by continued AI infrastructure investment, according to S&P Global Data.
Despite concerns about an AI market bubble, capital expenditures by cloud service providers are anticipated to climb 38% in 2026, building on 68% growth the previous year.
AI-related investments currently represent approximately 25% of total IT spending. Hardware categories such as servers and networking equipment are positioned to benefit from ongoing AI demand, while the semiconductor industry is projected to achieve growth exceeding 20% again in 2026. Software sector growth is expected to hold steady around 10%, and IT services that include public cloud offerings are forecast to increase 8%.
These sector-specific forecasts and technology outlooks are detailed in S&P Global’s report “AI Tailwinds Bode Well For 2026 IT Spending.”
