Meta reveals Petal, a 1-petabit subsea cable to France

On Sept. 21, Meta announced Petal, a subsea cable stretching roughly 4,300 miles to connect the United States and France. Expected to enter service in 2029, the system will deliver 1 petabit per second, or about 125,000 gigabytes per second. Meta says this is double the capacity of today's most advanced transoceanic cables, enough for three-quarters of the world's population to stream music at the same time. The cable uses two-core fiber to double capacity without a proportional rise in power or physical infrastructure.

The project supports massive data demands from artificial intelligence services. Meta launched its personal AI agent, Muse, on Sept. 8, powered by Muse Spark models. Muse climbed to No. 1 on Apple's U.S. App Store within two weeks, surpassing ChatGPT. The company, now valued at roughly $1.85 trillion, has invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects over the past decade, reaching every continent except Antarctica.

Petal is being developed with Japan's NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, while French telecom Orange is managing the landing on France's Atlantic coast. Meta also holds joint stakes in earlier projects, including the MAREA cable between Virginia and Spain completed in 2017 with Microsoft and Telxius. However, Meta is increasingly taking full ownership of its routes. Project Waterworth, announced in February 2025, will be entirely owned by Meta. According to telecom research firm TeleGeography, Waterworth will be only the company's third solely owned cable.

Waterworth will stretch more than 31,000 miles across five continents, connecting the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, and India, with segments laid up to roughly 4.3 miles deep. That follows Meta's 2Africa system, whose core finished last year, spanning 33 countries and reaching up to 3 billion people. TechCrunch reported that Waterworth could cost more than $10 billion. Across its entire business, Meta projects capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion this year, up from $72.2 billion in 2025.