Meta Partners With Broadcom to Develop Next Generation of Its AI Chipsets

Meta announced a new partnership with semiconductor giant Broadcom on Tuesday. The collaboration is focused on developing multiple generations of custom silicon for Meta's artificial intelligence (AI) apps and services. Currently, the company powers its AI compute via the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chips. The Menlo Park-based tech giant recently shared that in the next two years, it plans to release four new generations of its MTIA chips. It is likely that all of them will be developed in partnership with Broadcom.

Meta, Broadcom Partner to Build New AI Chips

In a newsroom post, the tech giant announced its partnership with Broadcom to develop multiple generations of its MTIA chips. For the unaware, MTIA is Meta's specialised accelerators built for inference and managing AI operations at scale. It not only powers the generative AI features via Meta AI but also its recommendation engine running on its social media platforms.

Meta released its latest MTIA processor in 2024, highlighting improvements in both architecture and performance. It is the same infrastructure that powers the tech giant's recently released Muse Spark AI model. But as the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm aims to scale out its AI services and offerings, it needs to upgrade the foundational layer of the infrastructure.

This is where Broadcom comes in. Meta highlighted that the partnership will leverage the chipmaker's XPU platform, which is designed to build custom AI accelerators. As part of the deal, Broadcom will be involved in the chip design, advanced packaging, and networking processes. “Broadcom's advanced Ethernet technologies will also enable seamless, high-bandwidth networking across Meta's rapidly expanding AI compute clusters,” the announcement post stated.

Both companies together have committed to developing custom silicon that generates more than 1 GW of compute in the first phase. Overall, the partnership aims for a multi-gigawatt rollout to help Meta scale its offerings and pursue its long-term ambition of personal superintelligence.

Notably, Meta also announced that due to the scale of the partnership, Broadcom President and CEO, Hock Tan, will transition from Meta's Board of Directors and will shift to an advisor role for the company. Hock has been on Meta's board for the last two years.