Meta is testing robots that can plug in cables, reset servers and handle other tasks inside its data centers. The effort, drawn from several current and former workers familiar with the projects and not previously reported, may eventually allow the company to operate its rapidly expanding data center footprint with fewer humans — keeping labor costs in check as its AI infrastructure spending soars.
According to the same workers, the company is using robots and related hardware from several different vendors. They asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Some vendors declined to comment; one did not respond.
The tasks under test
- Power cycling — the company is evaluating whether a robotic arm could be used for cutting off and restoring electricity to servers.
- Cable swapping — a different robot is being tested to swap networking cables.
- Pressing a button — at some facilities Meta quietly adopted a much simpler robot. It looks like a finger, or perhaps a pointy stick, that can press a device's power button to restart it when remotely prompted.
One Meta data center worker's estimate: if the cable-swapping trial succeeds, the bot could replace up to 80 percent of some people's workloads. That worker's phrasing conveys the tone: "We thought those of us performing the physical tasks were safe for a while, but not anymore. It's coming for us all, unfortunately."
What the company says
Meta declined to comment on the testing. A spokesperson said in a statement that the company is investing heavily in training and hiring workers to build and operate its data centers: "America is in the middle of its biggest infrastructure boom since World War II and there's a major shortage of skilled workers to fill the roles; we need more workers, not fewer."
But at a conference last year, the company's senior manager for robotics framed it differently, saying the 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."
Why it is possible now
Until recently, robots largely were not well suited to the delicate work happening in data centers. They were expensive, and in earlier industry trials they sometimes crushed servers while attempting simple tasks.
Two things changed: the hardware got cheaper, and the AI models powering robots are now far more capable than a few years ago. Several startups are currently working to build commercial robots capable of assembling servers, swapping parts and replacing wires.
Why it matters
The justification proponents offer is the same story attached to AI agents for knowledge workers: robots could take on technicians' most repetitive and dangerous tasks while freeing them to focus on more complex challenges.
But the longer-term rationale looks somewhere else. Getting workers out of the picture could make it feasible to run data centers underwater, in space, or in other environments inhospitable to living species. Paul Golding, who oversees physical intelligence at chipmaker Analog Devices, relays the customer demand: "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."
There is a political angle too. The growing use of robots has received little attention from the powerful nationwide movement against data centers. Yet tech companies often tout jobs for humans as an upside to these developments — and that argument gets used to justify tax breaks for them.