Home Meta doubles down on AI spending despite DeepSeek’s cost-efficient breakthrough

Meta doubles down on AI spending despite DeepSeek’s cost-efficient breakthrough

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday (Jan. 29) that it’s still too soon to say how DeepSeek’s breakthrough AI model will affect his company or the tech industry as a whole.

That said, he pushed back on the idea that Meta will start spending less on AI anytime soon despite claims that DeepSeek has shown cutting-edge AI can be built with far less money and computing power than expected.

Zuckerberg stated: “It’s probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and CapEx.

“There are a bunch of trends that are happening here all at once.”

However, it appears that Meta is continuing its trajectory of expanding its AI capabilities. During Meta’s first-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg pledged that the tech giant would “very heavily” invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” in AI over the long term.

A screenshot of a social media post by Mark Zuckerberg, featuring a map of Manhattan with a purple overlay indicating the footprint of Meta’s planned 2GW+ data center. The post highlights plans for Meta AI in 2025, including Llama 4, a billion-user AI assistant, and an AI engineer contributing to R&D efforts. The data center is described as large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan. Engagement metrics show 4.6K likes, 3K comments, and 501 shares.
Mark Zuckerberg posts message on Threads, outlining plans to increase AI expenditure through data centers. Credit: Meta

Meta reported a solid 21% jump in sales year over year, hitting $48.39 billion, which beat Wall Street’s expectations.

On Monday (Jan. 27), Meta’s shares rose to nearly 2%, suggesting that some investors think DeepSeek’s cost-efficient AI breakthrough could help the company build powerful AI systems for less money.

Meta plans to invest billions to expand AI

Meanwhile, last week, Meta announced plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion this year as part of its AI expansion. And on Wednesday, the company said it expects total expenses for 2025 to land between $114 billion and $119 billion.

A screenshot of a Facebook post by Mark Zuckerberg summarizing Meta's quarterly earnings report and future plans. Zuckerberg highlights progress in AI, glasses, and social media, stating that 2025 will be pivotal for Meta AI. He discusses a roadmap for Llama 4, a natively multimodal AI model, and an AI assistant expected to serve over 1 billion people with advanced personalization. The post emphasizes Meta's focus on open-source AI, scalability, and creating transformative products. Engagement metrics are visible at the bottom.
Mark Zuckerberg explains findings from the latest investors call. Credit: Meta

Zuckerberg said Meta will keep learning from technologies like DeepSeek’s while continuing to release its own open-source and free Llama AI models to help drive the industry forward.

He also pointed out that DeepSeek’s emergence reinforces the company’s belief in an open-source approach to AI. He said: “There’s going to be an open-source standard globally.

“For our own national advantage, it’s important that it’s an American standard.”

Featured image: Grok

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Suswati Basu
Tech journalist

Suswati Basu is a multilingual, award-winning editor and the founder of the intersectional literature channel, How To Be Books. She was shortlisted for the Guardian Mary Stott Prize and longlisted for the Guardian International Development Journalism Award. With 18 years of experience in the media industry, Suswati has held significant roles such as head of audience and deputy editor for NationalWorld news, digital editor for Channel 4 News and ITV News. She has also contributed to the Guardian and received training at the BBC As an audience, trends, and SEO specialist, she has participated in panel events alongside Google. Her…

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