Mark Zuckerberg thinks China’s DeepSeek AI fashions have some “novel” improvements he hopes to emulate. However it hasn’t given him second ideas about his mission to plow a whole lot of billions of {dollars} into Meta’s AI infrastructure.
“I proceed to suppose that investing very closely in cap-ex and infrastructure goes to be a strategic benefit over time,” the Meta CEO and cofounder mentioned through the firm’s This fall earnings name on Wednesday.
Meta re-affirmed its plan Wednesday to spend between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures this 12 months, up from $39 billion in 2024, as the corporate races to construct the costly knowledge facilities essential to energy new varieties of AI companies, together with a “extremely smart and personalised assistant.” Over the long run, Zuckerberg mentioned, Meta will spend “a whole lot of billions of {dollars}” on AI infrastructure.
The arrival of generative AI, akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has spurred an arms race amongst tech firms like Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet, which all consider that proudly owning the computing assets to run essentially the most superior AI fashions is important to their future enterprise prospects. Earlier this month, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank introduced plans to take a position $500 billion over 4 years into the so-called Stargate AI knowledge facilities.
That notion was lately known as into query when DeepSeek, a Chinese language startup, launched new AI fashions that rivaled essentially the most superior AI choices developed by U.S. firms. However, in accordance with DeepSeek, they had been skilled at a fraction of the fee. Whereas some business observers are skeptical about DeepSeek’s claims relating to prices, the capabilities of its AI fashions have nonetheless earned reward.
Zuckerberg mentioned there have been a variety of novel issues DeepSeek did “that we’re nonetheless digesting” and that he hoped to implement a few of these advances into Meta’s personal AI expertise. And he famous that the truth that DeepSeek’s mannequin was open supply was proof that Meta’s resolution to make its Llama AI expertise open supply was the precise transfer.
“There’s going to be an open supply normal globally, and I feel that for our personal nationwide benefit it’s vital that it’s an American normal,” Zuckerberg mentioned. “The current information has solely strengthened our conviction that that is the precise factor to be centered on.”
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Whereas Zuckerberg did be aware that modifications in the way in which superior AI fashions are skilled and run would possibly in some unspecified time in the future change the calculus for infrastructure funding, he mentioned that it was nonetheless “too early to essentially have a powerful opinion” on it based mostly merely on DeepSeek.
Meta’s total monetary outcomes for the final three months of 2024 beat analysts expectations, with income of $48.4 billion, up 21% year-over-year and forward of the $46.99 anticipated by Wall Road. The corporate publish internet earnings of $20.8 billion, or $8.02 per share versus the $6.76 EPS anticipated by analysts.
