Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) shares climbed 1.2% on Monday after CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a bold new initiative to expand the company’s efforts in artificial intelligence, shared via Threads, Meta’s social media platform positioned as a rival to X.
In his post, Zuckerberg outlined Meta’s commitment to developing superintelligent AI, emphasizing both infrastructure investment and talent acquisition.
“For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” he wrote. “We’re also going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence.”
As part of this push, Meta plans to launch its first advanced supercomputing facility, dubbed Prometheus, in 2026, which will eventually scale to gigawatt-level power capacity. Other major computing clusters, including Hyperion, are also under construction.
Zuckerberg’s announcement comes amid a surge in AI spending by major tech firms. Microsoft and Google have recently announced capital investments of $80 billion and $75 billion, respectively, aimed at expanding their AI capabilities—placing Meta’s previous $60–$65 billion roadmap in similar territory even before its latest expansion plans.
As Meta accelerates its infrastructure buildout, AI-related hardware firms such as NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), AMD (NASDAQ: AMD), Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), Dell (NYSE: DELL), and Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) are likely to benefit from the intensifying global AI investment wave.
Despite falling behind rivals like OpenAI and Google—whose large language models dominate both adoption and public perception—Meta has begun aggressively reshaping its AI strategy. Its Llama model family, used in the company’s Meta AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, has faced criticism for lagging behind competitors, particularly after delays surrounding its next-generation Behemoth model.
To close the gap, Meta recently launched Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a dedicated AI research division. The unit has attracted top-tier talent from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, offering compensation packages reportedly as high as $100 million.
“Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The initiative also includes prominent hires such as Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, who now serves as Chief AI Officer at Meta. This follows Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Additional figures helping steer AI development include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and ex-Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross.
On the hardware front, Meta is doubling down on AI-enabled consumer devices, including smart glasses developed in partnership with Ray-Ban and Oakley, and reportedly, AR/VR headsets similar to Google’s past initiatives. Meta sees these devices as vital interfaces for its future AI applications.
While reception to its current AI products has been mixed, Meta’s aggressive strategic pivot signals its clear intent to compete at the highest levels of the AI race. With new capital, leadership, and infrastructure in motion, the company is positioning itself to be a formidable player in what could be the defining tech race of the decade.
