Facebook owner Meta is testing its first in-house chip for training artificial intelligence systems, a key milestone as it moves to design more of its own custom silicon and reduce reliance on external suppliers like Nvidia, two sources told Reuters. The world’s biggest social media company has begun a small deployment of the chip and plans to ramp up production for wide-scale use if the test goes well, the sources said. The push to develop in-house chips is part of a long-term plan at Meta to bring down its mammoth infrastructure costs as the company places expensive bets on AI tools to drive growth. Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has forecast total 2025 expenses of $114 billion to $119 billion, including up to $65 billion in capital expenditure largely driven by spending on AI infrastructure. One of the sources said Meta’s new training chip is a dedicated accelerator, meaning it is designed to handle only AI-specific tasks. This can make it more power-efficient than the integrated graphics processing units (GPUs) generally used for AI workloads. Meta is working with Taiwan-based chip manufacturer TSMC (2330.TW), to produce the chip, this person said. The test deployment began after Meta finished its first “tape-out” of the chip, a significant marker of success in silicon development work that involves sending an initial design through a chip factory, the other source said.

Full exclusive : Meta is testing its first in-house AI training chip, a key milestone as it moves to design more of its own silicon and reduce its reliance on Nvidia.