While rumors in late 2025 suggested Meta was in “advanced talks” to lease and eventually purchase Google’s Ironwood (TPU v7) chips, new analyst reports from Haitong International Securities suggest that Meta has pivoted. The social media giant is now doubling down on its partnership with AMD, which already accounted for 42% of AMD’s AI GPU sales in 2025.
1. Avoiding the “Competitor Lock-In”
Industry insiders suggest that Meta’s leadership was wary of becoming deeply dependent on Google Cloud infrastructure.
- Ad Rivalry: Google is Meta’s primary competitor in the global digital advertising market. Relying on Google’s proprietary TPU architecture would have given Alphabet significant insight into and leverage over Meta’s long-term AI operating costs.
- Open Standards: By choosing AMD, Meta continues to support the ROCm open-source software stack, which aligns with its “Open Science” approach to AI (like Llama 4).
2. The Power of the “Helios” Rack
A key factor in the decision is the Helios Rack-Scale System, co-developed by Meta and AMD.
- The Specs: A single Helios rack features 72 MI455X GPUs and 18 EPYC “Venice” CPUs (built on 2nm Zen 6 architecture).
- The Scale: Meta is projected to deploy 5,000 to 10,000 of these racks throughout 2026 to support the massive inference requirements of its AI assistants and recommendation engines.
3. Scaling Back In-House Silicon (MTIA)
The pivot to AMD also signals a “reality check” for Meta’s internal chip project, MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator). While Meta continues to develop MTIA for specific workloads, the MI455X offers a faster and more cost-effective path to yotta-scale compute (10^24 FLOPs) than its own custom ASICs could provide by the 2026 deadline.
2026 AI Chip Comparison
| Feature | AMD Instinct MI455X | Google TPU v7 (Ironwood) |
| Primary Advantage | Massive Memory (HBM4) | Energy Efficiency |
| Ecosystem | Open (ROCm / PyTorch) | Proprietary (XLA / JAX) |
| Availability | Merchant Silicon (Buy/Own) | Primarily Cloud Lease |
| Meta Strategy | Primary Inference Partner | Testing / “Hybrid” Option |
Market Impact: AMD’s Gain is Nvidia’s Worry
Following the news on January 20, AMD stock rose 3%, while Nvidia faced slight pressure. Analysts now project that Meta will acquire 300,000 to 400,000 AMD units in 2026 alone.
- Nvidia’s Role: Meta isn’t abandoning Nvidia; it still plans to operate over 1.3 million Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2026. However, AMD is clearly capturing the “incremental growth” in Meta’s budget.
- Google’s Outlook: While losing the Meta hardware deal is a blow, Google still has massive commitments from Anthropic and Apple, who remain heavily invested in the TPU ecosystem.
Conclusion: A “Hybrid” Future
Meta’s 2026 strategy is now clear: Diversification. By playing AMD, Nvidia, and its own MTIA against each other—while keeping Google’s TPUs as a “cloud-only” backup—Mark Zuckerberg has ensured that Meta has the most flexible and cost-competitive AI factory in the world.
