Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) has been stung by bees in its attempt to catch up with big tech rivals in powering its artificial intelligence data centres by nuclear power.
The social media colossus was blocked by the presence of a rare species of the sting-tailed insects at a site where it had planned to build a data centre, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told staff last week that a deal lined up by the company to team up with a nuclear energy plant operator to power a new AI data centre was hit by environmental and regulatory hurdles.
This included the presence of a rare bee species adjoining the site of the proposed data centre.
As AI-aided queries are much more energy-hungry than standard internet searches, tech giants are under pressure to find cleaner ways to power their AI data centers.
Google went nuclear last month with a deal to buy power from smaller nuclear reactors to run its new data centres, with a first small modular reactor (SMR) from supplier Kairos expected to come online by 2030, followed by additional reactor deployments through 2035.
Soon after, Amazon unveiled a trio of SMR nuclear deals to help decarbonise its data centres and servers, including for its Amazon Web Services arm.
Analysts at UBS say these deals could become the "blueprint" for similar deals with other 'hyperscaler' large cloud service providers, also spawning a new phase of next-generation nuclear construction, where new SMR designs that better fit the power requirements for tech companies.
The FT report said Zuckerberg is "frustrated with the lack of nuclear options in the US" compared to China.