Meta Picks Former White House Advisor to Drive AI Projects

Meta has appointed new executives to head various aspects of its artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.

“Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook Monday (Jan. 12). “How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.”

Zuckerberg made that announcement soon after revealing Meta had appointed Dina Powell McCormick, a one-time top adviser to President Donald Trump, to a newly created senior management position focused on collaborating with governments and investors on artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

In addition, the company has promoted a pair of executives to run its “Meta Compute” data center project.

Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure, will continue overseeing the company’s fleet of data centers and their technical architecture.

Meanwhile Daniel Gross, one of the co-founders of Safe Superintelligence who joined Meta last year, will oversee a new group focused on “long-term capacity strategy, supplier partnerships, industry analysis, planning, and business modeling,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Powell McCormick, herself a former member of Meta’s board, will become a new president and vice chairman to “work on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s infrastructure,” the CEO added.

In related news, Meta last week inked agreements with three nuclear energy companies to help power its data centers. The company said the agreements with Vistra, TerraPower and Oklo, along with one signed with Constellation Energy last year, make Meta one of the top buyers of nuclear energy in the United States.

“State-of-the-art data centers and AI infrastructure are essential to securing America’s position as a global leader in AI,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in a news release. “Nuclear energy will help power our AI future, strengthen our country’s energy infrastructure, and provide clean, reliable electricity for everyone.”

Meta also recently Meta acquired Manus, an AI startup that offers a consumer-facing assistant with millions of paying users, for upwards of $2 billion.

“By acquiring Manus, Meta gains technology and distribution, along with immediate exposure to subscription revenue and insight into consumer willingness to pay for AI-powered assistance,” PYMNTS wrote last month. “The transaction also shortens the timeline for rolling out premium AI offerings without having to build a paid user base from scratch.”