**Better to Risk Billions Than Fall Behind in AI: Zuckerberg**
*By Akash Pandey | Sep 19, 2025, 02:12 PM*
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed his willingness to invest heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) research and development, emphasizing that the risks of lagging behind in AI far outweigh concerns about overspending.
Speaking recently on the *Access* podcast, Zuckerberg acknowledged the possibility of an AI bubble but argued that a greater danger for Meta would be not pursuing AI technology aggressively enough. He highlighted that missing out on superintelligence—a transformative leap in AI—could be far more damaging than spending a few hundred billion dollars too much.
### The Race Toward Superintelligence
Zuckerberg stressed that if companies move too slowly and superintelligence emerges sooner than expected, they risk falling significantly behind. He called superintelligence the most important technology in history for enabling new products, fostering innovation, and creating value.
“The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he said, underscoring the urgency of Meta’s AI ambitions.
### Massive Financial Commitment
In line with this vision, Meta has committed to investing at least $600 billion in U.S. data centers and infrastructure by 2028. This funding will cover data center buildouts and support broader U.S. business operations, including new hires—a figure confirmed by Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, earlier this month.
### Balancing Growth and Caution
Despite the vast scale of investment, Meta has recently slowed its recruitment pace after initially offering large signing bonuses to attract AI talent. This cautious approach reflects concerns from Wall Street, which has scrutinized Meta’s labor costs and warned that stock-based compensation might dilute shareholder value without clear innovation returns.
### Business Resilience Amid AI Competition
Zuckerberg contrasted Meta’s financial stability with that of other AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which rely heavily on fundraising to cover soaring compute expenses. “We’re not at risk of going out of business,” he stated, highlighting Meta’s more sustainable business model. He noted that the future of these private companies depends not only on AI performance but also on broader economic conditions.
### Strategic Focus on Superintelligence Research
To prepare for superintelligence, Meta is concentrating its top AI talent within a small, flat organizational structure—a dedicated “superintelligence” lab without rigid top-down deadlines. This approach reflects the research-intensive nature of advanced AI development.
Moreover, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta is making “compute per researcher” a key competitive advantage by outspending rivals on GPUs and designing custom infrastructure to power their AI workloads.
—
With bold investments and a strategic focus on frontier AI research, Meta aims to secure its place at the forefront of the evolving artificial intelligence landscape, ready to seize the opportunities presented by superintelligence.
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/news/business/risking-billions-on-ai-is-worth-the-gamble-zuckerberg/story