Meta Platforms Inc. said today it’s working with the British chip designer Arm Holdings Plc and will use its processors to help scale the artificial intelligence systems that drive some of the personalization features on applications such as Facebook and Instagram.

The social media giant’s AI-based search ranking and recommendation systems will both be powered by Arm’s Neoverse platform in future. Neoverse was recently optimized by Arm to run AI systems in the cloud.

The deal is seen as another key validation of Arm’s chip technology for AI workloads. The Softbank Group Corp.-backed company primarily competes with Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in the personal computer and data center server markets. Its central processing unit designs also power the vast majority of the world’s smartphones and tablets, but its presence in the AI industry is much smaller.

Arm also designs graphics processing units for AI workloads, but these have long been overshadowed by Nvidia Corp.’s GPUs, which provide a great deal more computing power. However, Meta’s head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan emphasized that Arm’s GPUs provide advantages in terms of their power efficiency. “Partnering with Arm enables us to efficiently scale our AI innovation to the more than 3 billion people who use Meta’s apps and technologies,” he said.

In their statement announcing the partnership, the companies explained that they have collaborated with one another to adapt Meta’s AI infrastructure software to run more efficiently on Arm’s chip designs. These software improvements have been made open-source, so that other companies can implement the same changes. This could help more companies switch their AI applications to Arm-based systems.

Arm Chief Executive Rene Haas said companies can benefit from his company’s chip architecture because the next era of AI will be defined by systems that can scale more efficiently. “We’re uniting Arm’s performance-per-watt leadership with Meta’s AI innovation,” he added.

Meta’s multiyear partnership with Arm comes as it continues its efforts to expand its data center network to meet anticipated demand for its AI services. It announced it’s working on a number of new U.S. projects.

For instance, it’s currently building a data center project known as “Prometheus” in New Albany, Ohio, which is expected to bring multiple gigawatts of computing power online by 2027. It’s also working on a 200-megawatt natural gas project nearby, which will provide much of the energy that data center needs.

Elsewhere, Meta said it’s building a data center campus called “Hyperion” that spans a 2,250 acre site in northwest Louisiana. It will deliver around five gigawatts of computational power when it’s up and running. Meta said it expects construction to be completed by 2030, though some parts of the facility may come online earlier than that.

In addition, Meta is also planning to invest $1.5 billion in a new Texas-based data center facility, which will be its 29th globally.

Image: Arm Holdings Plc