Meta's Next Big Move? Report Says Anthropic Plans to Lease AI Computing Power in $10 Billion Deal

Meta (META-US) closed down 2.79% at $646.01 per share on Friday (17th), after briefly plunging as much as 5.7% during the trading session. The New York Times reported that Meta is in talks with Anthropic over a potential agreement to lease computing capacity worth approximately $10 billion, under which Anthropic could make monthly payments to Meta over a two-year period.

Citing informed sources on Friday (17th), The New York Times said the collaboration idea was initially proposed by Anthropic in June and remains in early-stage discussions. Meta is currently evaluating various proposals, and there is no guarantee the two parties will ultimately sign an agreement.

Under the proposed arrangement, Anthropic would make monthly payments to Meta during the two-year contract term, and either party could terminate the partnership early.

If the deal is finalized, it would mark the first time Meta has sold large-scale cloud computing capacity to an external enterprise, indicating the company may be moving toward entering the AI infrastructure services market.

Anthropic has recently been expanding its external computing resources. In May, the company announced a partnership with SpaceX (SPCX-US), gaining access to the Colossus 1 data center in Tennessee, U.S., securing over 300 megawatts of computing capacity powered by more than 220,000 NVIDIA chips.

Meta owns numerous in-house data centers, but currently uses them primarily for internal operations, unlike Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, which offer large-scale cloud computing services externally.

As a result, the market is closely watching whether Meta will leverage its existing infrastructure to create a new revenue stream.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that external companies inquire almost weekly whether Meta can provide API services or sell idle computing power. At the time, Meta had not accepted such proposals, as the company believed its existing computing resources should still be used for internal development. However, Zuckerberg noted that if future capacity exceeds demand, selling computing power externally would become a viable option.

Bloomberg reported on July 1, citing informed sources, that Meta is exploring the development of a cloud infrastructure business and may eventually sell AI computing power and model access rights to enterprise clients. If the potential collaboration with Anthropic materializes, it could become a significant step forward in Meta’s push into this space.