Meta Plans to Invest $60 bn or More in AI this Year

A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)
A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)
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Meta Plans to Invest $60 bn or More in AI this Year

A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)
A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said the tech giant plans to invest at least $60 billion in artificial intelligence in 2025, aiming to lead in the technology.
"This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page.

Zuckerberg expects Meta AI to be the top digital assistant, used by more than a billion people, and for the tech firm's Llama 4 to be at the forefront of AI models, according to the post.

Meta is creating an AI "engineer" to contribute computer coding to its research and development efforts, he explained.

Meta will construct a massive new datacenter to power its AI ambitions and is planning $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures this year related to the technology, according to Zuckerberg, AFP reported.

"This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership," he said.

The post comes just days after US President Donald Trump announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Trump said the venture, called Stargate, "will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States."

But in a post on his social media platform X, Trump ally and tech tycoon Elon Musk said the main investors "don't actually have the money."

The comment marked a rare instance of a split between the world's richest man and Trump, with Musk playing a key role in the newly installed administration after spending $270 million on the election campaign.

Microsoft president Brad Smith, meanwhile, has gone on record saying the company was on pace this fiscal year to invest about $80 billion to build out AI datacenters, train AI models and deploy cloud-based applications around the world.

"The United States is poised to stand at the forefront of this new technology wave, especially if it doubles down on its strengths and effectively partners internationally," Smith said in an online post.



Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT on Apple App Store

ChatGPT logo is seen in this illustration taken, January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
ChatGPT logo is seen in this illustration taken, January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT on Apple App Store

ChatGPT logo is seen in this illustration taken, January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
ChatGPT logo is seen in this illustration taken, January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI Assistant on Monday overtook rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple's App Store in the United States.

Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say "tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally", the artificial intelligence application has surged in popularity among US users since it was released on Jan. 10, according to app data research firm Sensor Tower.

The milestone highlights how DeepSeek has left a deep impression on Silicon Valley, upending widely held views about US primacy in AI and the effectiveness of Washington's export controls targeting China's advanced chip and AI capabilities, Reuters reported.

AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. The Biden administration has since 2021 widened the scope of bans designed to stop these chips from being exported to China and used to train Chinese firms' AI models.

However, DeepSeek researchers wrote in a paper last month that the DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia's H800 chips for training, spending less than $6 million.

Although this detail has since been disputed, the claim that the chips used were less powerful than the most advanced Nvidia products Washington has sought to keep out of China, as well as the relatively cheap training costs, has prompted US tech executives to question the effectiveness of tech export controls.

Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek, a small Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, when search engine giant Baidu released the first Chinese AI large-language model.

Since then, dozens of Chinese tech companies large and small have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be praised by the US tech industry as matching or even surpassing the performance of cutting-edge US models.