Zuckerberg Shrugs Off DeepSeek, Pledges Billions for AI Expansion

While U.S. markets reacted sharply to fears that DeepSeek’s AI models could reduce demand for GPUs on Monday—leading to a nearly 20% drop in Nvidia’s stock—Meta isn’t changing course.

During Meta’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reaffirmed the company’s commitment to AI, pledging to invest “very heavily” in the technology over the long term. He even suggested that Meta’s total AI spending could reach “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

A Strategic Advantage in AI Infrastructure

Zuckerberg emphasized that AI infrastructure remains a key strategic advantage for Meta, regardless of how competition evolves.

Meta already plans to spend over $60 billion in 2025 on capital expenditures, primarily for data centers, reinforcing its focus on AI growth.

When asked about DeepSeek’s impact on Meta’s AI investments, Zuckerberg remained firm:

“At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to.”

He acknowledged that DeepSeek is a competitor and that Meta is learning from it, but he believes it’s “way too early” to assume AI chip demand will decline, particularly as inference workloads remain essential for scaling AI services to billions of users.

Meta’s Next Goal: Llama 4

Zuckerberg also outlined Meta’s ambitions for its next-generation AI model, Llama 4, aiming to make it the most competitive model globally—even rivaling leading closed models like ChatGPT.

Key advancements for Llama 4 include:

• Agentic capabilities, a growing focus in AI development, seen in OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest models.

• Multimodal capabilities, enabling AI to process and generate across text, image, and potentially other formats.

“Our goal with Llama 3 was to make open-source competitive with closed models,” Zuckerberg said. “And our goal for Llama 4 is to lead.”

Looking Ahead: Meta’s AI Power Play

Despite market uncertainty and new competitors like DeepSeek, Meta is making a bold bet: that massive AI infrastructure investment will be a long-term advantage. With billions in spending and Llama 4 on the horizon, Zuckerberg is positioning Meta as a leader in the next wave of AI innovation.

Editor’s Note: This article was created by Alicia Shapiro, CMO of AiNews.com, with writing, image, and idea-generation support from ChatGPT, an AI assistant. However, the final perspective and editorial choices are solely Alicia Shapiro’s. Special thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with research and editorial support in crafting this article.