Mark Zuckerberg · Google · Apple · Meta · Stripe · Facebook · Fortune Technology
Zuckerberg spent years building on Apple’s terms. His $100 billion-plus AI bet is about owning everything
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Mark Zuckerberg says he knew he was taking an enormous risk when he greenlit Meta’s AI buildout—a commitment he pegged at as much as $200 billion—before there was any proof it would work.
Key facts
- Zuckerberg said a one-gigawatt AI data center costs $50 billion to $60 billion to build and roughly $15 billion a year to operate
- We’re going to write this check for, like, I don’t know, like $100 billion, $200 billion,” Zuckerberg said on a recent episode of Cheeky Pint, the podcast hosted by Stripe cofounder John Collison
- Muse is free to use, with paid plans at $20 and $100 a month for heavier users
- The biggest blow came in 2021, when Apple began letting iPhone users block apps from tracking them —a change Meta later said would cost it about $10 billion in 2022 alone
Summary
“We’re going to write this check for, like, I don’t know, like $100 billion, $200 billion,” Zuckerberg said on a recent episode of Cheeky Pint, the podcast hosted by Stripe cofounder John Collison. Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, appeared alongside Zuckerberg and said decisions of that size get made “long before there’s proof points around whether or not even the thing is working.” He added: “It’s like the opposite of Lean Startup.” The episode was released Oct. 12, the same day Meta launched Muse Wonder, the first frontier-class model from the superintelligence lab Wang leads. Much of that money is going toward what Zuckerberg describes as a “full-stack” operation.