Meta strikes as much as $100B AMD chip deal because it chases ‘private superintelligence’

Meta plans to purchase potentially up to $100 billion worth of AMD chips, enough to drive roughly six gigawatts of data center power demand, the companies announced Tuesday.

As part of the multiyear agreement, AMD has issued Meta a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock — or about 10% of the company — for $0.01 each, structured to vest alongside certain milestones. The full stock award is conditional on AMD’s share price, which would need to hit $600 for Meta to receive its final tranche, per The Wall Street Journal. AMD’s stock closed at $196.60 on Monday.

Under the agreement, Meta will purchase AMD’s MI540 series of GPUs and its latest generation of CPUs. CPUs are increasingly becoming a core pillar of the AI inference compute stack because they’re efficient, easier to scale, and don’t tie companies solely to Nvidia.

AMD has been slowly gaining ground as AI firms look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia, which has been the longstanding leader in AI chips and has charged a premium for the title. Last October, AMD and OpenAI struck a similar deal trading equity for an agreement to buy chips.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm’s partnership with AMD is “an important step” as it diversifies its compute and works towards “personal superintelligence.” Zuckerberg has defined personal superintelligence as AI systems designed to deeply understand and empower individuals in their everyday lives.

Meta has pledged to invest at least $600 billion in U.S. data centers and AI infrastructure over the next several years, including a projected capital expenditure spend of $135 billion in 2026. Meta recently unveiled plans for a $10 billion gas-powered data center campus in Indiana designed for 1 gigawatt of compute capacity.

The AMD partnership comes a couple of weeks after Meta struck a multiyear deal to expand its data centers with millions of Nvidia’s latest CPUs and GPUs. The Facebook-maker is also working on its own in-house chips but has reportedly hit delays.