Meta, which is in the midst of a cost-cutting binge that has seen it downsize its office footprint in several cities, now is pausing construction on two huge data center projects and canceling other hyperscale facilities.

However, the social media giant isn't characterizing these moves as part of an effort to reduce costs: Meta says it must redesign the data centers to deploy unspecified "artificial intelligence infrastructure" as part of an overall shift of resources to AI, which the company now identifies as a high growth area.

The Facebook parent has announced it is stopping construction on a 900K SF data center in Temple, TX and on a 2.5M SF hyperscale campus in Huntsville, AL. Last week, the tech giant announced it is canceling two of three data centers it was planning to build in Odense, Denmark in what the company's head of European communications called a shift to a "strategic investment in artificial intelligence."