$META (-0,54%) Today, the "Petal" project today: a roughly 7,000 km submarine cable between France and the U.S. with a capacity of 1 petabit per second, or 1,000 terabits per second or 1,000,000 gigabits per second.
According to Meta, this is the largest capacity increase in a single generationever seen in transoceanic cables ever . Petal is scheduled to go into operation in 2029.
Why this is exciting for Meta and the AI industry
Submarine cables provide the connections that AI innovation worldwide: AI services run in large data centers across multiple continents. Models, training data, and user requests are constantly being moved between these locations, and this volume of data grows with every major model generation.
Having its own cables gives Meta three advantages:
- Cost: Meta does not have to lease bandwidth from network operators. Because Petal doubles capacity without power consumption and infrastructure growing at the same rate, every bit transmitted is also likely to be cheaper .
- Control: Meta decides for itself when, where, and how much capacity is available, rather than competing with other customers for available lines.
- Reliability: Following Marea, Amitié, and Anjana, Petal would be another transatlantic connection in which Meta has a stake. If one cable fails, traffic continues to flow through the others.
Petal is not a new source of revenue, and Meta does not disclose the costs. However, the value lies in the infrastructure on which Meta’s AI offerings run. For this reason, $GOOGL (+0,11%) has been investing in its own undersea cables for years for this very reason.
Overall, Meta is likely to save significantly on data transmission costs with its own cables while also being able to control more flexibly where and how its AI models run. Above all, this allows data centers on multiple continents to be used as a cohesive system, which is a major advantage in AI model development.
https://engineering.fb.com/2026/09/21/connectivity/petal-petabit-transoceanic-subsea-cable/
https://engineering.fb.com/2025/02/14/connectivity/project-waterworth-ai-subsea-infrastructure/
