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.



Windows’ Infamous ‘Blue Screen of Death’ Will Soon Turn Black

A view shows a Microsoft logo at Microsoft offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows a Microsoft logo at Microsoft offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Windows’ Infamous ‘Blue Screen of Death’ Will Soon Turn Black

A view shows a Microsoft logo at Microsoft offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows a Microsoft logo at Microsoft offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)

Nearly every Windows user has had a run in with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” at some point in their computing life. Now, after more than 40 years of being set against a very recognizable blue, the updated error message will soon be displayed across a black background.

The changes to the notorious error screen come as part of broader efforts by Microsoft to improve the resiliency of the Windows operating system in the wake of last year’s CrowdStrike incident, which crashed millions of Windows machines worldwide.

“Now it’s easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster,” Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday announcement.

As part of that effort, Microsoft says it's “streamlining” what users experience when encountering “unexpected restarts” that cause disruptions. And that means a makeover to the infamous error screen.

Beyond the now-black background, Windows' new “screen of death” has a slightly shorter message. It's also no longer accompanied by a frowning face and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process.

Microsoft says this “simplified” user interface for unexpected restarts will be available later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices.

And for PCs that may not restart successfully, Microsoft on Wednesday also said it is adding a “quick machine recovery” mechanism. This will be particularly useful for during a widespread outage, the tech giant noted, as Microsoft “can broadly deploy targeted remediations” and automate fixes with this new mechanism “without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.”

Microsoft said this quick machine recovery will also be “generally available” later this summer on Window 11 with additional capabilities set to launch later in the year.