From Internal Build-Out to External Revenue
The potential deal comes weeks after Bloomberg reported on July 1 that Meta is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that would sell access to both AI computing capacity and models to outside customers. The initiative, dubbed Meta Compute, is led by head of infrastructure Santosh Janardhan, Meta Superintelligence Labs leader Daniel Gross, and president Dina Powell McCormick. techcrunch bloomberg reuters
CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid the groundwork for the move during Meta’s annual shareholder meeting in May, telling investors that selling compute capacity is “definitely on the table.” He noted that “almost every week there are different companies that come to us from the outside asking us to both stand up an API service or asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we’ve bought it at”. bloomberg cnbc
Following the SpaceX Playbook
The deal would follow a pattern set by SpaceX, which signed a computing agreement with Anthropic in May worth nearly $45 billion over three years — $1.25 billion per month through May 2029. SpaceX subsequently landed a separate multi-year cloud deal with Alphabet’s Google, paying $920 million monthly from October 2026 through June 2029. The combined disclosed contracts between SpaceX, Anthropic, and Google exceed $70 billion in total value. bloomberg Yahoo Finance axios
Meta’s entry into the compute-leasing market would pit it against established cloud providers Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as neoclouds like CoreWeave. The company is also considering selling access to various AI models hosted on its infrastructure, similar to AWS’s Bedrock offering. thenextweb bloomberg
The Capacity Question
Meta has committed to building tens of gigawatts of data center capacity this decade, with capital expenditures projected at $64 to $72 billion in 2025 alone. The company recently announced a $10 billion hyperscale data center in Alberta, Canada — its largest facility outside the United States. A new division, formally established under the Meta Compute banner on July 13, will manage the company’s growing AI infrastructure ambitions. datacenterdynamics sahmcapital linkedin
Whether the Anthropic deal closes remains uncertain. SemiAnalysis described the negotiations as being in “final” stages, though the broader Meta Compute strategy is still in development and could shift. bloomberg ouralpha