Meta Is Quietly Testing Robots Inside Its Data Centers, and Workers Are Worried

Key points

• Meta has been testing robots from vendors including Kinova, ABB, and Watney Robotics inside its data centers since at least June 2024, according to current and former workers.
• One Meta worker estimates a cable-swapping robot could replace up to 80 percent of some people's daily workloads if the trial succeeds.
• Meta's largest data center campus, in Altoona, Iowa, employs hundreds of workers who share group chats describing fear of replacement within a few years.
• Microsoft and Google have made separate investments in data center robotics, suggesting this is a broad industry shift, not just a Meta story.
• Meta launched a free training programme in 2025 to teach thousands of people electrical, mechanical, and plumbing skills, with guaranteed jobs in several US states.

A robotic arm reaches toward a server. A pointy stick presses a power button. A wheeled bot trundles between racks scanning barcodes. These are not scenes from a sci-fi film. They are happening right now inside Meta's data centers, and the company's own workers are watching nervously.

Wired AI first reported that Meta is quietly running trials of robots built to do the physical, repetitive work that human technicians currently handle: plugging and unplugging cables, cutting power to servers (a process called "power cycling," basically the same as switching something off and back on), and restarting individual machines when they freeze. Multiple current and former workers confirmed the tests, speaking anonymously because they were not cleared to talk to press.

What are the robots actually doing?

Three separate machines are in play at various sites. A Kinova Gen3 robotic arm, a device that looks like a mechanical human forearm and hand, is being evaluated for power cycling servers. A second robot handles networking cables, the physical wires that connect servers to each other. A third is almost comically simple: a finger-shaped device that does nothing except press a power button when a human operator tells it to remotely.

Meta's Altoona, Iowa campus, the company's largest, is the main testing ground. Since last June, a pair of dual-armed Watney robots have been trialling cabling work in one of the buildings there.

The inventory robot already in use across Iowa and Virginia sites scans barcodes and checks for equipment failures. It has limits, though. Its camera only sees in greyscale, so it cannot tell a green "all-clear" light from a red "fault" light. It moves slowly, struggles with corners, and trips on cables lying across the floor.

Should data center workers be worried?

Honestly: some of them should pay close attention, even if mass replacement is not happening tomorrow. One Meta data center worker told reporters that a successful cable-swapping robot "could replace up to 80 percent of some people's workloads." Worker group chats in Altoona, according to one person familiar with them, have turned gloomy, with colleagues saying "we're all going to be gone in a few years anyway because of the robots."

Two workers separately described a second concern beyond robots: Meta is developing AI software they believe will let the company hire lower-skilled, lower-paid staff and centralise some roles in cheaper cities. "They no longer want people who can think independently," one worker said. "They want 'smart hands,' people who are just capable enough to follow AI instructions and not mess anything up."

Meta pushes back on that framing. Spokesperson Francis Brennan said the company is hiring and training workers, not shedding them. In 2025, Meta launched a free programme to train thousands of people annually in electrical, mechanical, and plumbing skills, with guaranteed jobs available in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and Texas for those who finish.

Eric Xu, Meta's senior manager for robotics, said publicly last year that the company's long-term goal is robots handling incident response, environmental monitoring, and routine maintenance inside data centers. "We have to start otherwise we don't have a chance to do this," he said.

Meta, Microsoft, and Google are all moving in the same direction. The question for data center workers is not really whether robots are coming. It is how fast, and what jobs look like on the other side.

Common questions

Why are companies putting robots in data centers now, when they tried before and it didn't work?

Earlier robots were expensive and clumsy: some crushed servers during simple tasks. The hardware has got cheaper, and the AI software controlling the machines is now far more capable, making delicate work like cable handling realistic for the first time.

Could robots eventually run data centers with no humans at all?

Some executives say that is the long-term ambition, partly because robots can work in heat and darkness that would be unsafe for people. That is years away at best, and current trials still depend on humans for tasks as basic as opening doors between buildings.