Meta to Manufacture Iris AI Chips Starting September

Meta Platforms will begin manufacturing its latest in-house artificial intelligence chip, code-named Iris, in September. Developed in collaboration with Broadcom and produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the chip is part of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerators program. The application-specific integrated circuit is designed to optimize recommendation systems and advertising performance for Facebook and Instagram while reducing inference costs.

The company intends to release a new AI chip approximately every six months through 2027. While these custom chips will complement rather than replace graphics processing units from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, the move signals a strategy to reduce long-term reliance on external vendors. To support this expansion, Meta has secured long-term supply agreements with Samsung Electronics, Sandisk, and Sumitomo Electric.

Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year to address processing power bottlenecks. This capital expenditure supports a goal to deploy seven gigawatts of computing capacity in 2026, doubling that figure to 14 gigawatts by 2027. Following the announcement of the Iris chip, Meta shares rose approximately 6% on Friday.