Meta, the parent company of social networking platform Facebook, will reportedly be deploying custom-made chips in its data centers in a bid to push AI adoption.
The news was first reported by Reuters, which claimed it saw an internal company document detailing the technology giant’s plans.
According to the report, Meta is aiming to deploy the second generation of its in-house chips in a bid to reduce reliance on NVIDIA, whose AI chips currently dominate the market. Additionally, with this move, Meta is also looking to cut down on the soaring costs associated with these chips as it doubles down on its own AI development.
Meta had first announced its plans of launching in-house custom AI chips, alongside data center projects that would support its AI development, in May 2023.
Just last week, the tech giant had announced its intentions to build a new data center in Indiana, USA, representing an investment of more than $800 million and supporting 100 jobs.
A spokesperson from Meta confirmed to Reuters that it was indeed planning to put the updated chip (internally referred to as Artemis) into production this year, adding that it would work together with the graphic processing units (GPUs) that Meta is purchasing.
“We see our internally developed accelerators to be highly complementary to commercially available GPUs in delivering the optimal mix of performance and efficiency on Meta-specific workloads,” the spokesperson told Reuters in a statement.