Meta signed two significant deals this week that highlight the escalating infrastructure challenge facing AI companies: an agreement to use millions of AWS Graviton chips for AI workloads, and a capacity reservation with startup Overview Energy to receive up to one gigawatt of power beamed from satellites in space.
Amazon announced the Graviton chip deal on Friday, timed pointedly as Google Cloud Next wrapped up. Unlike GPUs used for model training, ARM-based CPUs such as Graviton are increasingly suited to the real-time reasoning and multi-step coordination demanded by AI agents. Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy has publicly targeted Nvidia and Intel on price-performance grounds, making Meta’s endorsement a significant commercial validation for AWS’s homegrown silicon.
The energy deal addresses an equally pressing constraint. Meta’s data centres consumed over 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, and the company has committed to 30 gigawatts of renewable capacity. Overview Energy, founded by chief executive Marc Berte, is developing spacecraft that collect solar energy in orbit, convert it to near-infrared light, and beam it to existing terrestrial solar farms — enabling round-the-clock generation without battery storage. Overview plans to launch its first orbital demonstration in January 2028, with a fleet of 1,000 satellites in geosynchronous orbit targeted for 2030.
