Meta is investing billions in AI infrastructure and bolstering efforts to recruit talent from rivals to accelerate the push to artificial intelligence.
But in all the stories of “Superintelligence,” the company’s latest pivot raises the question whether this truly drives innovation or seeks another high-stakes gamble.
Meta’s plans are drastic and expensive.
In the second quarter of 2025 alone, the tech giant poured $17 billion into infrastructure, with CFO Susan Li saying that its total capital expenditure could reach $72 billion in 2025.
As more should come in 2026, most will be directed towards the construction of Prometheus and Hyperion, named after the Titans of Greek mythology.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dedicated most of Meta’s second quarter revenue calls to AI on Wednesday.
“There’s a lot written about the economic and scientific advances that superintelligence could bring. I’m very optimistic about this,” Zuckerberg said over the phone, but insisted that the huge impact is helping people live more meaningful lives.
In June, Meta launched its new division, META Superintelligence Labs, acquired AI companies and poached AI talent from rivals such as Openai and Google.
“We spent a lot of time building this team this quarter,” Zuckerberg said. “The people who join us will have access to unparalleled computing when building some multi-GW clusters.”
Today, Mark shared a meta vision for the future of personal closeness for all.
Read his full letter here: https://t.co/2p68g36kmj pic.twitter.com/hpzf77jaig– July 30, 2025, Meta (@Aiatmeta)’s AI
Meta Superintelligence Labs reads like Who’s Who’s Who’s Who’s Who in the AI industry, and meets the ranks of Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, former Github CEO Nat Friedman and former Openai researcher Shengjia Zhao.
The team is working on successors to the Meta llama model starting with 4.1 and 4.2.
“Our Prometheus cluster will be coming online next year. I think it will be the world’s first 1GW+ cluster,” he continued. “We will also build Hyperion that can expand up to 5GW over the years, and many more Titan clusters are being developed.”
Meanwhile, Meta AI is currently embedded in Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta apps, reaching 1.5 billion active users. Even the Meta hardware division is latching with Ray-Ban Meta Glasses with embedded AI assistants.
X’s response to Meta and Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence initiative is excited about the future of Meta’s AI development, with some pointing to other failed projects and scandals.
“So, I’m sure Meta Superintelligence Labs has today with the incredible team of AI researchers and we’re planning on reaching super intelligence soon,” one user wrote.
“It feels like everyone is invited to test drive a prototype rocket vehicle. It’s thrilling in theory, but you can’t question insurance,” another said.
Still, for all futuristic framing, the real test is whether a massive bet on meta’s superintelligence produces something other than a progressive improvement in engagement metrics.
It remains to be seen whether Meta’s AI ambitions have been pushed into sputtering like Metaverse, past rival AI developers, including Openai, Google and Xai.
Earlier on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said, “We released a blog post detailing our personal vision of super intelligence that will help you know us deeply, understand our goals and achieve them.
“We believe that the benefits of superintelligence should be shared as widely as possible with the world,” he writes.
Zuckerberg warned that Superintelligence would raise new new concerns despite his optimism about the future.
“We need to be strict about mitigating these risks and be aware of what we choose to open source,” he said. “Even so, we believe that in order to build a free society, we aim to empower people as much as possible.”