Meta moved its in-house designed silicon into production, reported alongside a series of infrastructure announcements across the sector in the period.
Entering production is the milestone separating a project from real capacity. Announcing a chip design team is a statement of intent with years ahead of it; entering production means volume is leaving a fab and being installed.
The reason is the one behind every similar announcement in the period: an off-the-shelf accelerator runs any workload and is ideal for none. Designing your own chip fits the hardware to the exact shape of the model you run, and gains efficiency per watt, which is cost.
There's a second, less technical and equally relevant reason: your own capacity doesn't sit in an allocation queue shared with all your competitors.
The side effect for the market is familiar. Every large buyer that starts manufacturing for itself reduces the demand supporting the price of those who sell to everyone, but also reduces open-market capacity in the short term, because it keeps buying while its own line matures.