Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California on September 25, 2024.
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Yuan Huge data centers and computing infrastructure are being built for AI projects at such a pace that CEOs Mark Zuckerberg Even a little surprised.
In a conference call with analysts Wednesday following Meta’s release third quarter earnings In the report, Zuckerberg explained to investors the relationship between Meta’s rising costs this year and the speed at which employees can obtain data centers, servers and artificial intelligence chips.
“We came into the year with a set of things we thought we could do, and we’ve been able to do more than we hoped for and expected at the beginning of the year,” Zuckerberg said.
It also means investors have to bear higher fees. Meta raised the lower end of its 2024 capital expenditure guidance to $38 billion from $37 billion. The cap remains at $40 billion.
“I’m actually pleased that the team executed well,” Zuckerberg said. “This execution makes me even more optimistic that we will be able to continue to build this program at a good pace.”
Mehta added that these expenditures included the purchase of billions of dollars value NVIDIA Graphics processing units will grow significantly in 2025.
Meta shares fell in after-hours trading Wednesday despite the company’s poor earnings and revenue performance. Lower-than-expected user growth and rising costs are also part of the concern.
During the earnings call, Barclays analyst Ross Sandler asked Zuckerberg how quickly Meta could build the tools needed to achieve its goals around generating artificial intelligence, given the likely obstacles. vast computing infrastructure energy demand and the time required to develop your own customizations AI dedicated chip.
Zuckerberg responded by praising Meta’s infrastructure team, which he said is working on various AI projects such as Llama large family of language patterns.
Wall Street is increasingly worried about tech giants like Meta and letter Spending too much on infrastructure without seeing immediate returns. This is a theme Zuckerberg acknowledged in an article interview In a July interview with Bloomberg, she told Emily Chang that the company was at risk of “overbuilding right now.” However, he said the risk of underinvestment was too great.
“In the short term, the formula around infrastructure may not be what investors want to hear, and we’re growing infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. “But, I just think the opportunity here is really great and we’re going to continue to be there. We’re making a lot of investments and I’m proud of the teams that are doing a great job maintaining a lot of capacity so that we can deliver world-class models and world-class products.
This isn’t the only place where investors have to endure huge fees.
Meta’s Reality Labs division (home of Metaverse technology) has released Operating loss $4.4 billion In the third season. The company said it expects “operating losses to increase significantly year over year in 2024 due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further expand our ecosystem.”
