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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.

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American Airlines joins the flock, hiking bag fees amid higher jet fuel prices

American Airlines on Thursday announced that it, too, will be hiking the fees it charges customers to check luggage.

With the move, all four of the major US airlines, which together control about 80% of the US market, have now hiked their baggage fees in recent days amid surging jet fuel prices.

The change will go into effect on tickets bought on or after Thursday, the same day Southwest’s hike begins.

Since late March, JetBlue, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Canada’s WestJet, and Southwest have hiked their fees. Experts expect more major carriers to follow, and to potentially tweak the pricing of other ancillary revenue sources like seat assignments and carry-on luggage.

American Airlines updates bag fees and Basic Economy fares

The change will go into effect on tickets bought on or after Thursday, the same day Southwest’s hike begins.

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Less than a year after implementing them, Southwest is also hiking its bag fees

Southwest Airlines has joined the growing list of airlines opting to hike their bag fees amid sustained higher jet fuel costs.

Starting today, the first checked bag at the carrier — which implemented bag fees less than a year ago — will jump from $35 to $45, and the second from $45 to $55. Southwest quietly disclosed the change Tuesday.

Southwest assigned the decision to “part of an ongoing analysis of the business and against the evolving global backdrop.”

As of Wednesday, jet fuel prices dropped to $4.16 a gallon, per the Argus US Jet Fuel Index, down from $4.81 on Tuesday following President Trump’s ceasefire announcement, which sent travel stocks soaring. Major airlines have shed some of those gains in premarket trading Thursday.

With the move to hike bag fees, Southwest joins JetBlue, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Canada’s WestJet, all of which also boosted fees this month. Experts expect more major carriers to follow, and to potentially tweak the pricing of other ancillary revenue sources like seat assignments and carry-on luggage.

Three US airlines have already hiked baggage fees. More are likely on the way.