Meta Platforms Inc is in talks to spend billions on Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips, The Information reported on Monday, adding to a monthslong share rally as the search giant has made the case it can rival Nvidia Corp as a leader in AI technology.
A deal would signal growing momentum for Google’s chips and long-term potential to challenge Nvidia’s market dominance, after the company earlier agreed to supply up to 1 million chips to Anthropic PBC.
Meta is in discussions to use the Google chips — known as tensor processing units (TPUs) — in data centers in 2027, The Information reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the talks. Meta also may rent chips from Google’s cloud division next year, the news outlet said.
Photo: Reuters
An agreement would help establish TPUs as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), the gold standard for big tech firms and start-ups from Meta to OpenAI that need computing power to develop and run AI platforms.
Nvidia’s stock is already facing headwinds as investors fear a broader AI bubble. Michael Burry, immortalized in The Big Short for his bets against the housing market during the 2008 financial crisis, has scrutinized the chipmaker over circular AI deals, hardware depreciation and revenue recognition.
After Google’s Anthropic deal was announced, Seaport analyst Jay Goldberg called it a “really powerful validation” for TPUs. “A lot of people were already thinking about it, and a lot more people are probably thinking about it now,” he said.
“Google Cloud is experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and Nvidia GPUs; we are committed to supporting both, as we have for years,” a Google spokesperson said.
Representatives for Meta declined to comment.
“We’re delighted by Google’s success – they’ve made great advances in AI, and we continue to supply to Google,” an Nvidia spokesperson said on Tuesday, echoing a post the company put on the social media platform X. “Nvidia is a generation ahead of the industry – it’s the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done. Nvidia offers greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs, which are designed for specific AI frameworks or functions.”
A deal with Meta — one of the biggest spenders globally on data centers and AI development — would mark a win for Google. But much depends on whether the tensor chips can demonstrate the power efficiency and computing muscle necessary to become a viable option in the long run.
The tensor chip — first developed more than 10 years ago especially for artificial intelligence tasks — is gaining momentum outside its home company as a way to train and run complex AI models. Its allure as an alternative has grown at a time companies around the world worry about an overreliance on Nvidia, in a market where even Advanced Micro Devices Inc is a distant runner-up.
GPUs, the part of the chip market dominated by Nvidia, were created to speed the rendering of graphics — mainly in video games and other visual-effects applications — but turned out to be well-suited to training AI models because they can handle large amounts of data and computations. TPUs, on the other hand, are a type of specialized product known as application-specific integrated circuits, or microchips that were designed for a discrete purpose.
The tensor chips were also adapted as an accelerator for AI and machine learning tasks in Google’s own applications. Because Google and its DeepMind unit develop cutting-edge AI models like Gemini, the company has been able to take lessons from those teams back to the chip designers. At the same time, the ability to customize the chips has benefited the AI teams.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS