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Zuckerberg: Meta’s AI-training cluster is bigger than Musk’s

The Meta chief plans to spend an entire quarter’s worth of revenue building out its AI infrastructure.

10/31/24 11:51AM

Meta is plowing full speed ahead on AI, and plans to spend a quarter’s worth of revenue on building out its infrastructure for the technology.

In a call announcing Meta’s Q3 earnings, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s next AI model, Llama 4, is currently being trained on a massive supercomputer cluster larger than Elon Musk’s xAI cluster of 100,000 H100 Nvidia GPUs.

“We’re training the Llama 4 models on a cluster that is bigger than 100K H100s or bigger than anything that I’ve seen reported for what others are doing,” said Zuckerberg in the earnings call.

Companies and (and governments) have been hoarding the popular Nvidia H100 GPU to train ever-larger AI models.

Zuckerberg said the smaller versions of the new Llama 4 model should be released early next year, and that the company is working to get the current versions of Llama into the hands of government agencies. “We’re working with enterprises to make it easier to use, and now we’re also working with the public sector to adopt Llama across the US government,” Zuckerberg said in the earnings call.

Meta says it will spend more on capital expenditures as it continues to scale its investment in AI, expecting to spend between $38 billion and $40 billion, an increase from last quarter’s estimate of $37 billion to $40 billion. That amount is about the size of the company’s overall revenue for the quarter, which grew 19% to $40.6 billion.

Despite reportedly laying off employees for their misuse of $25 meal vouchers, Meta’s headcount has increased 9% year over year to 72,404 workers.

Reality Labs is the division responsible for the ultra-thick augmented reality glasses code-named Orion, as well as its Meta Quest VR headsets. Meta continues to expect 2024 operating losses for the unit “due to our ongoing product development efforts and investments to further scale our ecosystem,” according to the earnings release. The division lost $4.4 billion this quarter.

Meta said that its generative AI tools are already being used by more than 1 million advertisers to create 15 million ads, which have led to an increase in ad performance.

Zuckerberg also announced that the social-media platform Threads — launched after Elon Musk purchased Twitter — is growing fast, signing up 1 million users per day, and now has a total of 275 million users.

“I’m pretty amped about all the work we’re doing right now. This may be the most dynamic moment that I’ve seen in our industry, and I’m focused on making sure that we build some awesome things and make the most of the opportunities ahead,” Zuckerberg said.

Tom Jones

hut’s off

14h

Yum! Brands might have found a potential buyer for Pizza Hut

Yum! is in exclusive talks with private equity firm LongRange Capital about a sale, per reports.

Hyunsoo Rim

hot dogs & half tanks

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Costco’s gas stations are breaking records as drivers seek cheaper fuel

Higher prices have pushed many members to the retailer’s pumps for the first time.

Max Knoblauch5/29/26

The Trump administration is reportedly planning a 50% made-in-America requirement for USMCA tariff relief

Qualifying for USMCA-related lower tariffs may soon require more US-made vehicle components, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to introduce a 50% US content requirement for vehicles covered by the trade pact to receive lower tariffs. The content would be measured by cost, according to the WSJ.

There currently isn’t any US-specific requirement for those lower tariff rates, but in order to receive preferential tariffs, vehicles are must contain at least 75% regional content (components made in North America). Per Reuters reporting, the Trump admin is seeking to raise the regional requirement to 82%.

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Overall, Tesla will likely have the easiest time qualifying for any stricter requirements. The automaker’s vehicles contained the highest amount of US/Canadian content in 2025, according to American University research. Ford, GM, and Stellantis all scored lower.

Notably: the underlying government data that many domestic content measurements rely on intentionally combines US and Canadian components, so it’s difficult to know exactly how much of any given vehicle is specifically US-made.

Exclusive | Trump Administration Wants Autos Under USMCA to Be at Least 50% Made in America

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Tom Jones5/29/26

The $640,000 Luce makes the average Ferrari look like a bargain

Put aside the shape; put aside the smoothing out of Ferrari’s iconic sharp edges; put aside, even, the calls from former Chairman and President Luca Cordero di Montezemolo to “take the Prancing Horse off.” On the grounds of price alone, Luce detractors might have a point.

By now, many of us will have read the criticisms of Ferrari’s first fully electric vehicle, as the Luce — which was unveiled to the world earlier this week and promptly saw the company’s shares crash out in New York and Milan — gets subtly shaded by competitors online and not-so-subtly shaded by basically everyone else.

What makes all of this worse for Ferrari is that, even by the luxury car maker’s notoriously high standards, they’ve slapped a pretty hefty price tag on the Luce, and the company’s CEO, Benedetto Vigna, has already been forced to defend the €550,000 ($640,000) price point, saying yesterday that it’s “fair to pay for innovation,” per Reuters.

While Ferrari’s cars have been getting more expensive of late, as recently as 2022, Ferrari’s average revenue per car sold was around $340,000. At nearly twice that price, this new electric model is obviously proving a little much (visually, conceptually, and financially) for many loyal and long-standing fans of the Prancing Horse to stomach.