After his speech at the World Economic Forum meeting on Wednesday, President Donald Trump unexpectedly mentioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During a Q&A session following the address, Trump recalled a moment when Zuckerberg showed a map of a proposed AI data center facility overlaid on Manhattan. Trump noted that the project’s footprint seemed to cover the entire island.
“Mark Zuckerberg showed me a facility, and when he placed it on a map of Manhattan, it was basically the size of Manhattan,” Trump told the gathering of global elites. “I said, ‘You must be joking.’ It was miles long, miles wide, and very tall. It literally covered most of the island.”
After Trump’s statement, Meta’s stock rose by 1.6%, and by the time of publication, the gain had narrowed to 0.9%.
Although Trump referred to the project as a “big facility,” he might have been talking about Meta’s Richland Parish “Hyperion” AI project, which is currently under construction in Louisiana and is scheduled to open in 2030. This large – scale industrial project spans 2,250 acres, an area equivalent to about 1,700 football fields. The campus will have 4 million square feet of data center space, making it one of the largest silicon clusters in the world. However, 4 million square feet is much smaller than Manhattan’s 22 square miles, which raises questions about whether Trump was referring to a much larger project being built by Zuckerberg.
Trump was also amazed by the project’s $50 billion price tag. He compared this huge investment with traditional real – estate projects, harking back to his days as a developer. That $50 billion matches the projected cost of building the Hyperion data center campus.
“If you spend $500 million, you can build a good shopping center,” Trump commented. “But how do you spend $50 billion? When I saw this, I understood why.”
Meta is currently transitioning from a social media company to an AI infrastructure giant. It has raised its capital expenditure guidance for the 2025 fiscal year to nearly $72 billion, which is 70% more than the previous year. Looking ahead to 2026, Zuckerberg has warned of “significantly larger” spending, and market analysts believe that annual outlays could exceed $100 billion.
The president said that AI is “huge” and is driving a rapid increase in energy demand, which requires a change in policy. Recognizing that the aging U.S. electrical grid cannot supply the two – to – five gigawatts of power that these “titan clusters” need, Trump told the government to step back during his speech: He informed the Davos audience that he has authorized AI companies
So far, it appears that under this new framework, tech giants will build their own on – site power plants using natural gas, coal, or oil. Trump promised to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that usually slows down such projects, often making them last four or five years. Instead, he pledged to give federal approval for these private energy plants in just two weeks, as long as the companies build their “own electric generating plants.”
“You people are very smart. You have a lot of money,” Trump said to the tech executives in the room, encouraging them to start building their own plants.
This industrial push serves as the president’s main bargaining chip ahead of his planned state visit to China in April. Trump has argued that American leadership in AI depends on physical infrastructure, not just software, and he said that Chinese President Xi Jinping respects this rapid industrial implementation.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with President Xi,” Trump said. “But we’re far ahead of the world in AI because I’ve allowed these big companies to build their own power – generating capacity. We’re producing more energy than any other country in the world.”
China and the U.S. are generally considered to be evenly matched in the AI race, with each country highlighting its own strengths to outperform the other. The U.S. leads China in AI talent, investment, and access to semiconductors, while China has an edge over the U.S. in AI – related infrastructure, according to a recent report. China is only “months” behind the U.S. in terms of model quality, Demis Hassabis, CEO of [company name], told CNBC.
On the same day that Trump was speaking in Davos, [CEO name] allayed fears of an AI bubble while discussing China’s progress. He specifically highlighted the release of DeepSeek in 2023 as a “major breakthrough.” Huang called China’s advancement in this area “a huge event for most industries and most companies around the world, because it’s the world’s first open reasoning model.” Since then, he explained, many open reasoning models have emerged, allowing researchers to create projects that are specific to their domains or specialized for their needs. In the U.S., Mark Zuckerberg has been notable for his commitment to open – source AI.