Meta, Facebook's parent, is strengthening its collaboration with U.S. semiconductor corporations Broadcom to secure computing resources for artificial intelligence (AI).
The two companies announced on the 14th (local time) that they signed an AI chip supply deal for up to 1 gigawatt (GW) through 2029. They did not disclose the specific size of the contract, but Meta said the deal is "the first step of a sustained multi-GW scale expansion." One GW is enough to power about 750,000 households.
Under the deal, Meta is developing its in-house AI chip, the "Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA)," and Broadcom will supply custom chips to be mounted on MTIA. Meta plans to deploy MTIA in its self-built AI data centers. Broadcom said in a statement that "the MTIA chip will be the first AI silicon to use a 2-nanometer (nm) process."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "With this collaboration, we will build a large-scale computing foundation to deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people worldwide," adding, "Initially, we will deploy more than 1 GW of custom silicon, and then expand supply to multiple GWs."
Following the deal, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan will step down from Meta's board to serve in an advisory role.
Meta is accelerating in-house chip development to reduce its reliance on Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) and respond to surging AI demand. Last month, it unveiled four MTIA chips optimized for large-scale inference and recommendation tasks, and in Feb., it signed a deal to adopt AI chips with Google, pursuing both supplier diversification and in-house development.