Source: Fortune.com
Summary
Meta announced Petal, a 4,300-mile subsea cable connecting the U.S. and France, set to launch in 2029. The cable will deliver 1 petabit per second, double current transoceanic capacities. Meta says it uses two-core fiber to boost capacity without increasing power or infrastructure. The company has invested in over 20 subsea projects, covering six continents. Petal is developed with NEC and Sumitomo Electric, and will be Meta’s third wholly owned cable.
Our Reading
The announcement sounds familiar.
Meta is building undersea cables to power its AI ambitions.
Petal will double current transoceanic speeds.
The company has spent years expanding its seafloor network.
It’s investing billions in infrastructure, even as it faces scrutiny over data access.
Infrastructure is the backbone of the AI era, and Meta is laying the tracks.
Author: Evan Null
Meta’s subsea cables reach 6 continents
Subsea cables aren’t new territory for Meta, which is now valued at roughly $1.85 trillion. The company has spent the past decade building its presence on the seafloor and says it has invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects. Taken together, those projects touch every continent except Antarctica.
The most ambitious is Project Waterworth, announced in February 2025. Meta says the system will stretch more than 31,000 miles, longer than the Earth’s circumference. It will connect the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, India, and other regions across five continents. Some segments will be laid as deep as roughly 4.3 miles below the surface to protect them from ship anchors and other hazards.
Meta’s 2Africa system, whose core was completed last year, circles the African continent and connects to Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Meta says it lands in 33 countries and can reach 3 billion people.
Meta hasn’t built all of this alone. Petal is being developed with Japan’s NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, and French telecom Orange is handling the landing on France’s Atlantic coast. Meta has even partnered with rivals. The MAREA cable between Virginia and Spain, completed in 2017, is jointly owned with Microsoft and telecom company Telxius. Increasingly, though, Meta is taking the driver’s seat. Waterworth will be wholly owned by Meta, making it only the company’s third solely owned cable, according to telecom research firm TeleGeography.
Meta’s undersea projects come with high costs
These projects don’t come cheap. Meta hasn’t disclosed what Petal or Waterworth will cost, but TechCrunch reported before Waterworth’s announcement that the project could top $10 billion. Even so, cables are a small slice of Meta’s overall infrastructure bill. The company expects capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion this year, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent in 2025.
With 12-figure budgets and record-breaking construction projects, Meta is betting its infrastructure spending will pay off. Whether it does remains to be seen.
