Meta stock surges 7.5% as report says AI chip production could begin this year

Shares of Meta Platforms surged nearly 7.5% in Friday's trade (10 July), climbing to $677 on the Nasdaq and extending its winning streak to a second straight session after a Reuters report said the company is planning to begin manufacturing its own artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

According to the Reuters report, Meta plans to start manufacturing its custom AI chip, code-named “Iris”, with partners Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) later this year.

Reuters reported, citing an internal company memo it reviewed, that Meta plans to begin manufacturing the AI chip from September as part of its strategy to expand its overall computing capacity to 14 gigawatts next year.

The report said Iris is part of Meta's four-generation Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) programme, under which the company is designing AI processors in-house. Meta plans to use the custom-built silicon to improve the AI systems powering its Facebook and Instagram platforms.

Meta unveiled Iris under its technical name in March alongside three other AI processors. The company plans to launch a new AI chip roughly every six months through 2027, a much faster cadence than the industry norm, where new AI chips are typically introduced at intervals of a year or more.

The demand for components such as memory and AI chips has surged as technology companies race to expand their data centre infrastructure to meet the growing computing requirements of artificial intelligence.

Testing the chip took only six weeks and found no major issues, the memo showed. That relatively quick progress signals positive momentum for an in-house effort that has floundered since its launch more than half a decade ago.

Meta tailored the chip for its own needs and is working with Broadcom to help design it and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to manufacture it. The approach is likely to help the firm lower its massive computing costs and gain more independence from chip suppliers such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

Meta expects to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year. According to the Reuters-reviewed memo, the company has secured long-term, multi-year supply agreements with Samsung Electronics for memory chips, Sandisk for flash storage, and Sumitomo Electric for fibre-optic equipment.

Meanwhile, Meta on Thursday expanded its AI push by releasing developer access to its Muse Spark AI model, intensifying competition with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Meta is exploring ways to monetise its rapidly expanding AI infrastructure, including offering developers access to its AI models and renting out computing capacity through its data centres and AI chips.

With today's rally, shares of the Facebook and Instagram parent have surged 20% so far in July, marking a sharp rebound from an 11% decline in June.

The stock came under severe selling pressure after hitting a record high of $796 per share and, at one point, slipped below $520.

Since those lows, the stock has regained strong momentum, rallying nearly 30% from its trough to today's intraday high. Despite the sharp recovery, the shares still trade about 15% below their all-time high.

The recent volatility follows an extraordinary rally between November 2022 and July 2025, during which the stock soared from $93.16 to $773, delivering returns of nearly 730%.