Meta Platforms Inc will deploy 6 gigawatts’ worth of data center gear based on processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), a blockbuster deal that marks a win for the chipmaker’s attempts to catch up with Nvidia Corp.
Meta will buy AMD chips and computers designed to run artificial intelligence (AI) models over a five-year stretch, beginning in the second half of this year. The series of transactions will be worth “double-digit billions” of dollars per gigawatt, according to AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰).
As part of the arrangement, Meta will receive warrants to buy 160 million AMD shares in stages, the two companies said. The shares will vest when the project and AMD’s stock price reach certain milestones, turning Meta into a major holder.
Photo: Reuters
The agreement is the latest step in a colossal spending spree by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority, pledging to devote hundreds of billions of dollars to “aggressively front-load” computing capacity.
Last month, Zuckerberg announced a new initiative called Meta Compute that’s focused on building “tens of gigawatts this decade and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time” to secure a strategic advantage over competitors.
One gigawatt represents the output of a nuclear reactor — enough electricity to power roughly 700,000 homes.
The announcement signals that AMD is keeping pace with larger rival Nvidia, which disclosed its own tie-up with Meta last week. And it shows that broader spending on AI equipment continues to accelerate, even as some investors express fears of an investment bubble.
For Meta, the AMD deal will bring components that are customized to its needs. It also will have the ability to influence how those semiconductors are designed going forward.
“Our ambitions are pretty high,” Meta global infrastructure head Santosh Janardhan said. The company plans to forge ahead with its own in-house custom AI chip efforts and will continue to purchase from Nvidia, with the chips being used to support different workloads.
“At the scale we’re talking at, there’s a place for all three,” Janardhan said during an interview with reporters.
Janardhan added that the company hasn’t yet decided which of its data centers will use the new chips delivered through this expanded partnership with AMD. The processors are expected to help with the inference stage of AI — the phase when trained models are put into use.
Su said that Meta, which has already helped influence the design of AMD’s chips, will get custom versions of its forthcoming accelerator, the MI450, and successor products. That ability to define more closely what it needs was part of the reason for committing to AMD, Janardhan said.
“What we’re looking to do is go big and accelerate,” Su said. “We were on a very good path with Meta, but this actually takes our relationship to the next level.”
Meta is already AMD’s second-largest customer, and will now be increasingly vital to the chipmaker’s growth. AMD reported US$34.6 billion in sales last year and is on course to boost revenue by 34 percent this year, according to Wall Street estimates. The addition of even US$10 billion of extra sales would accelerate its efforts to gain ground on Nvidia.
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