Meta says it will invest $600 billion in the US, with AI data centers front and center (www.engadget.com)

Meta announced it will invest $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure and jobs by 2028, and said much of that spending will focus on AI data centers. The company framed the move as necessary to build “the next generation of AI products” and “personal superintelligence,” citing that its data centers have supported over 30,000 skilled trade jobs and 5,000 operational roles since 2010 and that it’s currently directing more than $20 billion to U.S. subcontractors. The pledge repeats a $600 billion number Mark Zuckerberg floated at a recent White House dinner; the current announcement is short on project-level details but emphasizes expanded data-center capacity and related hiring. For the AI/ML community, the headline is straightforward: large-scale capital commitment to compute infrastructure usually translates into more training and inference capacity, lower latency for deployment, and faster R&D cycles for large models and personalized AI services. It could accelerate development of Meta’s AI features (including its controversial “AI glasses” and ambitions around “personal superintelligence”), while concentrating more compute and data handling in a few corporate clouds — with implications for competition, supply chains, regional job growth, energy use, and safety debates. The announcement amplifies both the technical opportunity of vastly increased compute and the policy questions about safety, control and equitable access to AI resources.