In a video posted to Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta, Facebook's parent company, is set to acquire 350,000 high-end chips from Nvidia by the end of 2024, to expedite research and development in general artificial intelligence (AI).
Meta is reorganizing its AI research teams to advance the creation of General Artificial Intelligence (AGI), a form of AI that competes with or could even surpass human intelligence.
In the video, Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, explained that the reorganization would accelerate their research efforts and enhance the experience of the metaverse a virtual world that Zuckerberg believes represents the future of social interaction.
According to Interesting Engineering, Meta currently has two teams working on AI research. The first is the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) group, established in 2013. The second team focuses on improving AI experiences for the company’s service-related applications. Zuckerberg suggests that these teams should work more closely together.
Though Zuckerberg did not disclose specifics, it has been revealed that Meta is planning an expansion in this area, a significant move considering the company has parted ways with 20,000 employees since 2022.
Zuckerberg believes that these changes could position Meta as a leader in AGI development, competing with other prominent players such as
Elon Musk's x.ai, Google, and beyond.
The scale of this endeavor is evidenced by Meta's planned order of 350,000 top-tier GPUs from Nvidia chips capable of supporting seamless artificial intelligence tasks. This acquisition could cost approximately $9 billion, according to estimates.
The Nvidia H100 is the company’s most advanced chip to date, reportedly highly efficient for training large language models, like ChatGPT, which are crucial in generative artificial intelligence. With additional computing capacities equivalent to the H100, it's projected that by the end of 2024, Meta could have 600,000 processors of such caliber.