The Incredible Return of MetaI always find it fascinating to study stocks that have "returned from the dead" and made comebacks no one saw coming. I'll be the first to admit this: while I get some trades right, this one I got completely wrong. I thought Meta was on its way out in so many different ways. In fact, during its most recent crash in late 2022/23, I thought the final nail in the coffin had been struck.
But I was wrong.
Yes, I was very wrong. It's up over 600% since that point!
Looking at Meta's recent resurgence, I have to give Zuck credit where credit is due. He took bold swings, diving into AR/VR, AI, and cutting-edge technology like headsets. Something tells me there’s even more up his sleeve—possibly a phone of some kind. On a recent Joe Rogan podcast, he also had the guts to call Apple out in several distinct ways.
But what’s really caught my attention is Meta’s new data center. That, perhaps, is the bigger story here. The data center. Here are some impressive stats about the massive facility Meta has agreed to build:
1. Scale: The facility will span approximately 4 million square feet, making it Meta's largest data center to date, though still smaller than Langfang, China’s 6.3 million-square-foot behemoth.
2. Compute Power: By 2025, the center is expected to deliver around 1 GW of compute capacity—the same output as a typical U.S. nuclear power plant and enough to power about 1 million homes annually.
3. GPU Count: With over 1.3 million GPUs planned, this data center will dwarf the world's fastest supercomputer, Frontier, which uses 50,000 GPUs. The facility will be designed to handle enormous AI processing demands.
4. Capital Expenditure: Meta's projected capex for 2025 is $60–$65 billion, surpassing the GDP of countries like Iceland and Estonia and more than doubling Google's 2022 capex of $31 billion.
5. Bandwidth and Connectivity: Supporting 1.3 million GPUs will require unprecedented bandwidth and innovative networking solutions, potentially exceeding 100 Tbps.
I don’t plan on taking a position in Meta, but it’s certainly sparked my interest in the incredible investments happening in this space. Specifically that we are in a stock picker's market and that many companies, the ones who have survived the recent years, are emerging now as the leaders. There is a rather large basket of moves like this that continue to shape up!
As I write this, I can’t help but think that more comebacks like this are on the horizon. I’ve been sharing ideas like these on my profile and have more to come. Stay tuned.
