Inside Meta’s push to put robots to work in data centers

But at a conference last year, Eric Xu, senior manager for robotics at Meta, said the company’s “long-term goals” are to put robots in data centers, arguing they could speed up incident response, monitor the environment, and handle preventative maintenance. “We believe more collaboration and research will be needed, but we have to start, otherwise we don’t have a chance to do this,” he said. Until recently, robots largely weren’t well suited for the delicate work happening in data centers. They were expensive, and in earlier trials in the industry they sometimes crushed servers while attempting simple tasks, a person briefed on the experimentation says. But the hardware has gotten cheaper, and the AI models powering robots are now far more capable than they were a few years ago. Several startups are currently working to build commercial robots capable of assembling servers, swapping parts, and replacing wires. Robots could offer more consistent output at a lower cost than human labor, especially in less populous regions where data centers are plentiful but qualified workers are scarce. Proponents also rally behind a pro-worker message: Like AI agents promise to do for knowledge workers, they argue robots could take on data center technicians’ most repetitive and dangerous tasks while freeing them to focus on more complex challenges. Longer term, getting workers out of the picture could make it more feasible to run data centers underwater, in space, or in other environments potentially inhospitable to living, breathing species. “More and more of our customers are telling us ‘we want to run our data centers using humanoid [robots]’ because you can run them at higher temperatures, in the dark, and all these things,” says Paul Golding, who oversees so-called physical intelligence at the chipmaker Analog Devices. The growing use of robots has received little attention from the activists driving a powerful nationwide movement against data centers. Tech companies often tout jobs for humans as an upside to the developments that can be used to justify tax breaks for them. In Altoona, Iowa, Meta operates what is now its largest data center campus, which employs hundreds of workers. The company opened the facility in 2014 and has several years left of a property tax break that allows it to save tens of millions of dollars annually, which the city has viewed as a worthwhile trade-off for having its cachet upped by having Meta jobs. In Altoona, Meta worker group chats have taken on a demoralized tone, “saying we’re all going to be gone in a few years anyway because of the robots,” a person familiar with the discussions says. Even if adoption of robots proves slower than anticipated, some worry the quality of jobs available is trending downward. Two of the workers say that Meta is developing AI software and other technologies that they believe will allow it to hire lower-skilled—and thus, lower-paid—workers and centralize some roles in areas such as Denver, Colorado, that are more financially advantageous to the company. “They no longer want people who can think independently, come up with creative solutions, or perform complex troubleshooting,” one Meta data center worker says. “They want ‘smart hands,’ people who are just capable enough to follow AI instructions and not mess anything up.” Meta contends its need for skilled workers remains robust. This year, the company launched a long-term program to train thousands of people annually from any background in electrical, mechanical, and plumbing work at no cost to them. Meta is even guaranteeing employment in states such as Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Texas for those who complete the training. It also partnered with building trade unions to fund apprenticeship programs. But as communities rethink data center tax breaks and weigh putting new rules on the industry, the prospect of robots replacing at least some jobs may need to become a bigger concern. Altoona Mayor Dean O’Connor tells WIRED he hasn’t given much thought to robots taking jobs at Meta’s data center, though he frames automation as inevitable. “We will deal with it as it comes,” he says. Two sources also describe the inventory bot as too slow. One says Meta previously explored using drones as a faster alternative, but ultimately didn’t pursue the idea. The Altoona data center campus is often where Meta prototypes new technologies. “What they do here in Altoona, they take to their other sites and put that in place there,” says O’Connor. Since last June, Meta has been trying out a pair of dual-armed Watney robots for some cabling work at one of its Altoona buildings, according to one of the people familiar with the company’s efforts. The robots are supervised by humans and can’t work as fast as people yet, but they show promise. After Watney launched in 2023, it put out a demo of a laundry-folding robot that it claimed could also handle janitorial work inside businesses. The San Francisco startup quietly pivoted to data center robots early last year, according to archived copies of its website. Meta is testing additional robots in New Albany, Ohio, at the company’s newest data center campus known as Prometheus. Four-wheel robots “with a scissor-lift-style riser and a six-axis arm on top” made by the automation giant ABB are being used there to reseat parts and, eventually, they may take on other tasks with diminishing human oversight, a person familiar with the product says. But the idea that robots will prevail over humans isn’t guaranteed. “There’s been a lot of pilots and demos, but no provable working solution,” says Helen Oleynikova, CEO of Exclaim Robotics, which is developing prototypes to replace broken parts and reset cables in data centers. At Meta’s data centers, some workers have complained about the amount of downtime the robots need to recharge their batteries, according to the people familiar with the matter. Meta has also acknowledged internally that robots aren’t equipped for certain tasks, such as the intense cabling work required to run an Nvidia GB300 supercomputer. “Things have been designed for human hands forever to make everything a five-minute repair,” says one former Meta employee. “Redesigning everything will take time.” But the robots are getting prepared. This story originally appeared at wired.com.