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Meta partners with Arm to boost AI recommendations across Facebook and Instagram

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Meta Platforms announced a new partnership with chip technology firm Arm Holdings to power the AI systems behind its personalization and recommendation engines across Facebook and Instagram. The collaboration marks another milestone for Arm as it pushes deeper into data center and AI computing — areas long dominated by Intel and AMD’s x86 architecture.

Meta will deploy Arm-based data center platforms to run the ranking and recommendation algorithms that determine what users see on its apps. Both companies said the shift will deliver higher performance and improved energy efficiency compared to traditional x86 systems.

Arm, backed by Japan’s SoftBank, provides the chip designs that serve as blueprints for central processing units (CPUs) used in billions of devices worldwide. While its technology already dominates smartphones, it is rapidly expanding into server and personal computer markets.

As part of the announcement, Meta revealed a $1.5 billion investment in a new Texas data center, its 29th facility globally, to support AI infrastructure growth. The two companies also said they have optimized Meta’s AI software for Arm chips and made the improvements open source, allowing developers to freely use and build upon them — a move expected to speed up Arm’s adoption in cloud computing.

Meta and Arm plan to continue refining their joint open-source projects to make AI workloads more efficient and accessible across the industry.

MIT spinout Vertical Semiconductor raises $11 million to develop efficient AI power chips

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Vertical Semiconductor, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has raised $11 million in funding to commercialize a new generation of gallium nitride (GaN) power chips designed to deliver electricity more efficiently to artificial intelligence data centers, the company announced on Wednesday.

Led by Playground Global, the funding will help the company bring its vertical transistor architecture to market. The technology aims to reduce the massive energy losses that occur when power is converted from grid-scale voltages to the tiny levels needed by microchips—losses that typically generate significant amounts of heat instead of usable power.

“That is power you are not delivering to computing tasks—it straight turns into heat,” said Matt Hershenson, a partner at Playground Global.

AI data centers, which power tools like ChatGPT, consume enormous amounts of electricity—comparable to that of entire cities. As a result, chipmakers including Renesas, Infineon, and Power Integrations are partnering with Nvidia to develop next-generation GaN power chips.

Vertical Semiconductor’s innovation lies in stacking transistor components vertically rather than spreading them horizontally, making the chips smaller, more efficient, and cooler. The company plans to deliver prototypes this year and begin full production in 2026.

The firm was co-founded by MIT professor Tomas Palacios and researcher Joshua Perozek, whose doctoral work laid the foundation for the technology. CEO Cynthia Liao, formerly of MIT Sloan, said the company’s chips could offer data center operators step-change energy savings rather than incremental improvements.

“We do believe we offer a compelling next-generation solution that is not just a couple of percentage points here and there, but actually a step-wise transformation,” Liao said.

UK’s Nscale to supply Microsoft with 200,000 Nvidia AI chips in major data center deal

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Nscale, a British artificial intelligence infrastructure company backed by Nvidia, announced on Wednesday that it will supply around 200,000 Nvidia AI chips to Microsoft under an expanded partnership aimed at scaling data center capacity across Europe and the United States.

While the financial details were not disclosed, the Financial Times reported that the deal could be worth up to $14 billion, based on similar contracts. The agreement will be executed in collaboration with Dell Technologies, which will help deploy the AI hardware across Microsoft’s hyperscale facilities.

The rollout will begin next year, with Nscale supplying Nvidia GPUs from its data centers in Texas and Portugal, the company said. The project also includes a joint venture with Norway’s Aker, which will provide 52,000 additional GPUs from Nscale’s hyperscale AI campus in Narvik, Norway.

The partnership reflects the surging demand for AI computing power, as tech giants including Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet race to build infrastructure capable of training and deploying massive AI models. According to Citigroup, global AI-related infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $2.8 trillion by 2029.

Nscale, which raised $1.1 billion in September from investors including Aker and Finland’s Nokia, said the funds will accelerate its data center expansion and position the company as a key player in the global AI supply chain.