Meta hires Trump ally Powell McCormick to drive AI buildout

Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg News on Jan 12, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Meta Platforms Inc. has appointed a former top adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump to a newly created senior management role focused on partnering with governments and investors on AI.

Dina Powell McCormick, a former Goldman Sachs executive, is joining the company this week as president and vice chairman. She’s part of a new team of senior executives that will focus on the company’s growing list of expensive data center projects — a group that will help steward the hundreds of billions it plans to investment into artificial intelligence infrastructure as it pursues “superintelligence.” She will report to Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

Powell McCormick, who resigned from Meta’s board in December, will help build and maintain strategic capital partnerships, which Meta will rely on to fund massive data center projects. She’ll have a particular focus on “partnering with governments and sovereigns,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg also promoted two other executives to lead an internal initiative known as Meta Compute, which will oversee the company’s global fleet of data centers, its supplier partnerships and other business modeling necessary to build AI infrastructure over the next decade, he said in a separate announcement.

Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure, will continue overseeing the company’s fleet of data centers and their technical architecture, but will now report directly to Zuckerberg. Daniel Gross, who joined Meta last summer during the company’s AI hiring spree, will lead a newly created group focused on capital strategy, supplier partnerships and business modeling around Meta’s AI efforts. He’ll also report to Zuckerberg.

Meta has invested aggressively in AI infrastructure as it pursues superintelligence — AI systems that can outperform humans at many tasks. The company is building several gigawatt-sized data centers around the country, including one in rural Louisiana that Trump said would cost $50 billion. Meta says it plans to scale that Louisiana data center to 5 gigawatts, a structure Zuckerberg has described as nearly the size of Manhattan. And this month, Meta announced partnerships with energy companies to become one of the world’s biggest corporate buyers of nuclear power.

“Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” Zuckerberg posted Monday, referring to the company’s energy-intensive data center projects. “How we engineer, invest and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.”

Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $600 billion on infrastructure over the next several years, and Meta has already sought tens of billions of dollars in external financing to help pay for some of the projects.

This new group will help oversee those efforts and secure more funding for future endeavors. Powell McCormick has decades of experience working in finance, including 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where she led the firm’s global sovereign investment banking business. She was most recently president and head of global client services at the investment firm BDT & MSD Partners. She’s leaving that firm to join Meta but will remain on its advisory board, according to Gregg Lemkau, BDT & MSD Partners co-CEO.

Powell McCormick also has close ties to the Trump administration, which has taken a heightened interest in U.S. infrastructure projects. She was deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, and also worked in the George W. Bush administration. Her husband, Dave McCormick, is a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.

Trump congratulated Powell McCormick Monday in a post on Truth Social. “She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction,” he wrote.

Meta is racing against major tech companies to develop AI-related infrastructure. Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. are pledging tens of billions of dollars to build massive data center complexes. Elon Musk’s xAI is also spending aggressively and recently announced a third data center site near Memphis, Tennessee, that includes a $20 billion investment.

While Meta spends heavily on AI, it’s trying to reduce costs elsewhere. The company plans to cut 10% of jobs in the company’s Reality Labs division, part of a broader strategy to shift money away from some virtual reality products and into other AI wearables. The cuts are expected this week, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.