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Investing.com -- Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) shares rose 1.2% on Monday as CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined an ambitious artificial intelligence expansion effort on Threads, the company’s social media app positioned as a rival to X. In a post detailing massive investments, Zuckerberg described Meta’s push to build cutting-edge infrastructure supporting superintelligent AI.
“For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re also going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence.” He added that Meta’s first advanced supercomputing facility, called Prometheus, will launch in 2026, eventually scaling to several gigawatts of power consumption, with additional clusters such as Hyperion also under development.
The declaration comes amid an AI investment boom among Big Tech firms fueled by escalating demand. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) recently committed $80 billion and $75 billion respectively in capital expenditures for AI capabilities, putting Meta’s prior $60 to $65 billion roadmap in similar range before these latest initiatives.
Chipmakers, such as NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD), Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO), and Marvell Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MRVL), as well as AI infrastructure leaders like Dell Technologies Inc (NYSE:DELL) and Super Micro Computer Inc (NASDAQ:SMCI), are in focus as Meta’s massive investment plans are poised to further accelerate the already surging global AI spending cycle.
Meta has lagged peers in the AI arms race, particularly OpenAI and Google, whose large language models continue to dominate general adoption and sentiment. Meta’s open-source Llama family of models powers its digital assistant Meta AI, embedded across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, though the models have drawn criticism for trailing rivals, especially after the reported delay of its much-anticipated Behemoth model.
In response, the company has pivoted hard by creating Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a bespoke R&D organization poaching elite AI talent from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, with highly lucrative compensation packages reportedly reaching as high as $100 million in bonuses. “Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” Zuckerberg said in his post.
A cornerstone of the MSL push includes bringing in major figures such as Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI, who joins Meta as Chief AI Officer after it invested $14.3 billion into the AI data-labelling startup. Additionally, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and ex-Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross are helping steer AI product development under the MSL banner.
The hardware side of Meta’s strategy also remains a key pillar, with continued investments in AI-enabled devices such as smart glasses via partnerships with Ray-Ban and Oakley and its push through Meta Quest VR headsets. The company believes these platforms will form the physical conduits for AI-powered applications as it builds toward a broader computing future.
Despite mixed early reception to its AI offerings, Meta’s assertive shift continues to show it has no intentions to follow the industry’s frontrunners. With new infrastructure, capital, and leadership in place, the company is positioning itself to compete aggressively in what could become the most consequential technological race of this decade.