Meta has announced a multi-year partnership with AMD to purchase up to six gigawatts of custom AI chips, potentially gaining a 10% stake in the chipmaker through performance-based shares. The deal, valued in double-digit billions per gigawatt, aims to support Meta's expanding AI infrastructure across its platforms. This arrangement mirrors a similar agreement AMD made with OpenAI last year.
Meta and AMD revealed their partnership on February 24, 2026, under which Meta will buy billions of dollars' worth of AMD Instinct GPUs based on the MI450 architecture, optimized for Meta's workloads. The agreement covers up to 6 gigawatts of computing power, equivalent to the energy needs of 5 million US households for a year or nearly 2,000 large solar panels per gigawatt. Deployment of the first gigawatt is scheduled for the second half of 2026.
As part of the deal, AMD is issuing Meta a performance-based warrant for up to 160 million shares of its common stock at an exercise price of $0.01. This could result in Meta owning 10% of AMD if milestones related to shipments, stock price thresholds up to $600, and technical achievements are met. The warrant expires in February 2031, with the first tranche vesting upon the initial gigawatt shipment.
AMD CEO Lisa Su described the arrangement as expanding their strategic partnership, stating, "We are proud to expand our strategic partnership with Meta as they push the boundaries of AI at unprecedented scale." She added that each gigawatt of compute is worth double-digit billions and noted, "In some sense, Meta is taking a big bet on AMD, and we are also giving Meta a chance to participate if AMD shareholders do well."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called AMD "an important partner for many years to come." Santosh Janardhan, Meta's head of infrastructure, emphasized diversification: "We don’t believe that a single silicon solution will work for all of our workloads. There’s a place for Nvidia, there’s a place for AMD and… there’s a place for our own custom silicon as well. We need all three."
The chips will primarily handle inference workloads for AI models on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta also plans to deploy millions of AMD EPYC CPUs and serve as a launch customer for the sixth-generation EPYC processors. This deal follows a similar one with OpenAI announced in October 2025, which also offered a 10% stake for six gigawatts of GPUs.
Meta intends to nearly double its AI infrastructure spending to $135 billion this year, amid tightening supplies and rising prices for components like RAM. Analysts note such "circular" transactions could create dependencies between AI firms and chipmakers, potentially amplifying risks if AI demand falls short of expectations. Meta stated, "By diversifying our partnerships and technology stack, we’re building a more resilient and flexible infrastructure."
