According to Bloomberg, the founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that the social media giant would spend “hundreds of a billion dollars” on the construction of a huge artificial intelligence data centre in the United States. Zuckerberg indicated that the first Dodjiva data centre, called Prometheus, was expected to be operational by 2026. In particular, he noted that the area covered by one of the sites would be close to the size of Manhattan, New York.
According to data, Meta, which relied mainly on online advertising for profit, received over $160 billion in 2024. Meta is investing heavily in the development of what it calls “super-intellectual” technology, an artificial intelligence that is said to be likely to exceed the highest levels of human intelligence. Zuckerberg posted on his social media, Treads, stating that Meta was building several Dodgiva data centre clusters. One of the clusters, entitled “Hebalian,” can be expanded to five giva over the next few years. “We are also building more “Titan class” clusters. One of them is a significant part of Manhattan, he adds.
According to Zuckerberg, the “Prometheus” data centre will be located in New Albany, Ohio, and the “Haberian” site, Louisiana, is expected to be fully operational by 2030. He stated that Meta would “invest hundreds of billions of dollars to build super-intelligence” and that the data centres were given “names commensurate with their size and impact”. According to the BBC, “It is clear that Zuckerberg intends to go to the top of the AI field through a heavy investment station.” He added: “The talent he recruits will have the opportunity to use the world’s best Al hardware.”
According to Reuters, after the news was released, the price of the Meta stock increased by 1 per cent. The cumulative increase in the company ‘ s shares since this year has exceeded 20 per cent. There are currently at least 10,000 data centres worldwide hosting the Cloud End (a remote server that stores digital information), most of which are located in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany. However, AI-driven data centres consume extremely large amounts of energy and water resources. A study predicts that by 2027, such data centres globally could consume up to 1.7 trillion gallons of water resources. Only one AI query (e.g., a request to ChatGPT) is equivalent to a small bottle of water purchased at a convenience store.
