Meta pledges to spend billions on AI infrastructure – but will this help it catch up in the AI race

• Meta is set to almost double its AI infrastructure spending
• Meta looks to keep pace with major AI rivals
• AI infrastructure comes at a huge environmental cost

As governments and private companies around the world announce huge AI infrastructure plans, Meta has become the latest to announce a major spending spree.

In its most recent quarterly financial results, the company announced an expansion of spending to around $66-$72 billion – more than doubling its spending on data centres and servers.

“We expect that developing leading AI infrastructure will be a core advantage in developing the best AI models and product experiences, so we expect to ramp our investments significantly in 2026 to support that work,” Susan Li, Meta CFO, said during the company’s earnings call.

Costly infrastructure

The move comes shortly after Meta’s shares jumped more than 10%, thanks largely to advertising business success, where AI-driven ad creation tools allow users to generate video ads from images, helping prompt better conversion rates.

Meta says it expects a similar jump in spending onwards in 2026, as the firm looks to “aggressively [pursue] opportunities to bring additional capacity online to meet the needs of [its] artificial intelligence efforts and business operations.”

Meta isn’t alone, as Microsoft has also announced plans to spend billions on AI, announcing over $30 billion capital investment as it expands AI capacity in a bid to keep up with the likes of Amazon – which itself is set to spend up to $111 billion in 2025, with the majority going towards tech and infrastructure.

This infrastructure, primarily referring to data centres and large servers, is costly in more ways than one. It would be disingenuous to talk about data centre spending without mentioning the enormous environmental costs associated with the infrastructure.

Data centres consume massive amounts of energy and water – depleting local water sources and putting huge strain on already labored energy grids.

Local communities are being hit hard by nearby data centre constructions – with data centres in Texas using 463 million gallons of water, as residents are instructed to take shorter showers to offset the usage.

In Georgia, residents living in proximity to Meta’s own data centre, can no longer drink their water, with taps running dry thanks to added sediment in local wells. The cost of municipal water has skyrocketed, and the county water commission may face a shortage.

Via: TechCrunch

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