Meta begins testing its first in-house AI training chip

Facebook owner Meta is testing its first in-house chip for training artificial intelligence systems, a key milestone as it moves to design more of its own custom silicon and reduce reliance on external suppliers like Nvidia, Reuters reports.

The world's biggest social media company has begun a small deployment of the chip and plans to ramp up production for wide-scale use if the test goes well, according to two sources with Reuters.

The push to develop in-house chips is part of a long-term plan at Meta to bring down its mammoth infrastructure costs as the company places expensive bets on AI tools to drive growth.

Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has forecast total 2025 expenses to between $114 billion and $119 billion, including up to $65 billion in capital expenditure largely driven by spending on AI infrastructure.

One of the sources said Meta's new training chip is a dedicated accelerator, meaning it is designed to handle only AI-specific tasks. This can make it more power-efficient than the integrated graphics processing units generally used for AI workloads.

(With input from Reuters)