Meta completed a major data center expansion in Odense, Denmark, by laying off the main contractor for two facilities in the country.
According to reports from Data Center Dynamics (opens in a new tab), this decision is the result of a company pivot to build data centers with technology better suited to the demands of modern AI workloads.
"Supporting large-scale AI workloads requires a different type of data center than those built to support our regular online services," said Peter Münster, country communications manager at Meta Nordics, adding that Meta is now focusing its efforts to "create a new generation of data centers."
Meta is currently reworking 11 projects currently in development for these new AI workloads, which are still in development as the new designs have yet to be finalized according to the post's sources.
GPUs designed explicitly for AI workloads or machine learning (ML) databases, for example, can require significantly more electrical power to run efficiently.
In addition, Meta also announced that it would suspend construction on a planned 900-square-foot data center in Temple, Texas, which did not break ground until spring.
Although Meta's performance hasn't exactly outperformed the world of late — its market capitalization has lost more than half its value since January 2022 — data centers is one area in which it has vowed to continue investing.
Although the company says it is on track to significantly reduce spending in many other areas, it said it is on track to make "continued investments" in its data center space.
A Meta spokesperson said in a call published by Seeking Alpha (opens in a new tab): "We believe the additional data center capacity will give us greater flexibility with the types of servers we purchase and allow them to be used for more time, which we hope will generate higher returns over time.”
In November 2022, Meta laid off about 11 employees (opens in a new tab), or about 000% of its global workforce, saying it was "restructuring teams" to "increase efficiency," pointing to areas like its " real estate footprint ” due to the cuts.
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