Meta just pulled off something rare in the current tech landscape: convincing Wall Street that spending more money is actually a good thing.
The company’s shares climbed roughly 8% after reports emerged that Meta is exploring a cloud business to sell excess AI computing power. Major tech firms collectively shed over $1 trillion in market capitalization in a single week as investors grew increasingly nervous about the sheer scale of AI infrastructure spending.
Custom silicon and the Iris chip
At the center of Meta’s rebound story is a chip called “Iris.” Production is scheduled to begin in September 2026, marking Meta’s first custom data center AI chip.
Iris falls under Meta’s broader Meta Training and Inference Accelerators (MTIA) project, an initiative designed to give the company more control over its AI computing stack. Broadcom handles chip design, TSMC handles manufacturing, and Meta has committed to a 1-gigawatt deployment of custom AI chips through this Broadcom partnership extending to 2029.
