Meta Is Testing Robots to Handle the Last Manual Jobs in Its Data Centers

Meta is in early trials with robot arms from ABB, Kinova, and Watney Robotics to automate data center maintenance work: hot-swapping network cables and power-cycling server racks, according to Ars Technica and Wired. Both outlets obtained the details from current and former Meta employees who asked for anonymity.

One anonymous Meta worker at a pilot site told Ars Technica that a single Kinova Gen3 robotic arm could replace up to 80 percent of the facilities workload if the trial succeeds. Meta declined to comment on the testing.

The trials are running at Meta's Altoona, Iowa prototype campus and at a New Albany, Ohio site, with Altoona serving as a testbed for tasks Meta later rolls to other buildings. Watney's dual-armed robots are doing cabling work under human supervision, and one source told Ars Technica the inventory bot is currently too slow to match human workers. Both ABB and Kinova declined to comment; Watney did not respond. The Futurism write-up that surfaced the trial is a re-report summarizing the original Ars and Wired reporting.

Watney Robotics launched in 2023 with a laundry-folding demo and shifted to data center robots early in 2025, according to archived copies of the company's site. Meta previously explored using drones for inventory tasks inside its facilities but did not pursue the idea, Wired reported.

The labor piece of the data center cost stack is small. The bulk of operating cost is hardware, and the heaviest line on the capex side is the AI chips powering large language models. Cutting the facilities labor tail is a margin play rather than a survival one, and it lands on the small slice of work that still requires a person to walk a server row. The symbolic weight is bigger than the dollar weight: the data center's last human-intensive layer is now visibly on the automation path.

The 80 percent figure, even if the trial meets it, is one worker's estimate of a single arm at a single site. The trial is early. Watney's cable bot is slower than the people it is supposed to replace. Meta will not say what comes next.