Meta, the corporate that owns Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp has been catching up with like OpenAI, Google and Perplexity within the AI house. Nonetheless, the corporate’s plan to construct a nuclear energy plant to energy its AI data centre could have been thwarted due to a uncommon bee species.
Reportedly, Meta was within the means of finalising a cope with the prevailing nuclear energy plant operator to construct a brand new data centre to energy its ongoing and upcoming synthetic intelligence initiatives. However in response to the Monetary Instances, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed workers members that in a gathering the deal fell by after a uncommon bee species was discovered inhabiting the land the place the ability plant was to be constructed.
The report additionally means that Zuckerberg stated that pushing by the deal wasn’t attainable as they must face quite a few environmental regulatory challenges. Whereas the publication didn’t trace if Meta is trying for a brand new website to construct its AI data centre, the corporate would possibly nonetheless be trying for different locations or emission-free sources of power to fulfill its rising AI computing and energy necessities.
Nonetheless, Meta shouldn’t be the one tech large trying to construct nuclear energy vegetation for its AI ambitions. Final month, Google’s parent company Alphabet signed a deal with Kairos to buy six to seven small reactors, which can present the tech large with 500 megawatts of power.
Earlier this 12 months, Microsoft also signed a deal with Constellation Energy to restart a unit of the now shutdown Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, which occurs to be the location of the worst nuclear accident within the historical past of the USA.