Meta’s Leveling Up Its AI Game With Data Centers The Size Of Manhattan

What’s going on here?

Meta’s cranking up its AI game, building data centers the size of small cities.

What does this mean?

Mark Zuckerberg has gone from poking his Facebook friends to poking… the future. Meta is set to spend $72 billion this year alone on “titan clusters”: data centers the size of Manhattan. These massive, power-hungry facilities will need consistent rivers of electricity, stacks of high-end chips, and miles of internal copper wiring. The first one – nicknamed Prometheus – will go live next year, all going to plan. And when it does, that’ll jumpstart a push toward so-called superintelligence: the next (somewhat terrifying) level of AI, where machines could actually outsmart us all.

Why should I care?

For markets: Red-hot metal.

Meta’s mega-build is just one piece of the broader AI race. Tech giants are all scrambling to erect enormous server farms – each one packed with copper. See, the red metal is needed in huge quantities for wiring, cooling, and power management within these facilities. And that’s where the job gets tricky. Copper prices in the US have been, err, surging: they’re up 38% this year, fueled by tariffs and all of that demand. That’s squeezing margins across the board – from AI labs to EVs – which could put a serious drag on Big Tech’s stateside spending plans.

Zooming out: Copper’s a showstopper.

The US is racing to build domestic supply chains, and copper is at the center of the action. With China dominating global smelting and almost half of US imports coming in already refined, investors might soon turn away from fancy silicon chips and toward the more rudimentary red metal. In this new kind of industrial era, the companies that mine, refine, or reroute copper will be the ones holding the power – literally.

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Originally Posted on July 15, 2025 – Meta’s Leveling Up Its AI Game With Data Centers The Size Of Manhattan