Artificial Intelligence: "Shadow debt": AI corporations are taking on financial obligations of $2.7 trillion

Facebook's parent company Meta has committed to investing at least $135 billion (approximately €120 billion) in expanding its artificial intelligence infrastructure this year, according to recent reports. The company has increased the lower end of its expenditure forecast by $5 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is aggressively expanding AI data centers in a bid to compete with leaders such as OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT. Despite this, Meta still anticipates a total investment of $145 billion in AI development.

The majority of this funding is derived from the booming advertising business within the Facebook conglomerate. In the last quarter, Meta's revenue increased by 26 percent year-on-year, reaching $64.6 billion. The company's profit for the period amounted to $9.86 billion, compared to a loss of $2.7 billion a year prior. As of now, Meta's apps have been used by a minimum of 3.64 billion users, the same figure as three months prior.

The Meta umbrella also comprises the messaging service WhatsApp, the photo and video platform Instagram, and Threads, a competitor to Musk's Twitter successor, X.