July 14 (Reuters) -

Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that Meta would

spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive

AI data centers for superintelligence, intensifying his pursuit

of a technology that he has chased with a talent war for top AI

engineers.

The social media giant is among the large technology

companies that have chased high-profile deals and doled out

multi-million-dollar pay packages in recent months to fast-track

work on machines that can outthink humans on most tasks.

Meta reorganized its AI efforts under a new division called

Superintelligence Labs last month following setbacks with its

Llama 4 model amid key staff departures. It expects the new

division to generate new cash flow streams from the Meta AI app,

image-to-video ad tools and smart glasses.

Unveiling the spending commitment in a Threads post on

Monday, CEO Zuckerberg touted the strength in the company's core

advertising business to support the massive spending that has

raised concerns among tech investors about potential payoffs.

"We have the capital from our business to do this,"

Zuckerberg said. He also cited a report from a chip industry

publication Semianalysis that said Meta is on track to be the

first lab to bring online a 1-gigawatt-plus supercluster, which

refers to a massive data center built to train advanced AI

models.

Meta is building several multi-gigawatt data center clusters

to support its AI ambitions, Zuckerberg said.

The first, dubbed Prometheus, is expected to come online

in 2026, while another, called Hyperion, will be able to scale

up to 5 gigawatts over the coming years, he said, adding that

the company was also developing multiple additional clusters.

Meta shares were trading 1% higher. The stock has risen more

than 20% so far this year.

Zuckerberg has personally led an aggressive talent raid for

the Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by former

Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and ex-GitHub chief Nat Friedman,

after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale.

The company has also offered to buy a minority stake in

Friedman and tech investor Daniel Gross NFDG's funds from

limited partners through a tender offer, sources have told

Reuters.

Meta had raised its 2025 capital expenditure to between

$64 billion and $72 billion in April, aiming to bolster the

company's position against rivals OpenAI and Google.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru;

Editing by Anil D'Silva)