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

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Meta is quietly testing robots inside its data centers, according to multiple current and former workers speaking to Ars Technica. The effort — previously unreported — is part of the company's bid to control labor costs as AI infrastructure spending climbs. Hardware under evaluation comes from three vendors: Watney Robotics, Kinova, and ABB. In one experiment, a Kinova Gen3 robotic arm is being tested for power cycling — cutting and restoring power to servers. A separate robot is being evaluated for swapping networking cables. One Meta data center worker estimates the cable-swapping bot could replace up to 80 percent of some employees' daily workloads. Meta has also deployed a simpler device resembling a finger that presses power buttons on Mac Minis and similar hardware on remote command. The company's public stance and internal reality appear to be in tension. Spokesperson Francis Brennan said Meta needs 'more workers, not fewer,' citing a national infrastructure boom and a skilled worker shortage. But Eric Xu, Meta's senior robotics manager, told a conference that putting robots in data centers is a long-term company goal — for incident response, environmental monitoring, and preventative maintenance. Earlier data center robot trials failed badly: robots reportedly crushed servers attempting simple tasks. Cheaper hardware and substantially improved AI models have since made the use case viable, and multiple startups are now building commercial robots specifically for server assembly, cable management, and parts replacement.