In October of last year, Mark Zuckerberg casually noted that businesses frequently inquired about purchasing computing power from Meta, often at premium rates. At the time, it seemed theoretical. However, on July 17, the New York Times highlighted this possibility as a concrete development.
According to the New York Times, Meta is in preliminary discussions with Anthropic regarding a computing arrangement that could potentially reach $10 billion over a two-year period. Anthropic initially proposed this deal in June, and Meta is currently evaluating it. Both parties have opted not to comment, and since the negotiations are still in the early stages, there is no guarantee a contract will materialize.
The structure of the proposed deal, as detailed by the Times, would have Anthropic making monthly payments to Meta over two years, with provisions for either side to exit the agreement early. CNBC has also confirmed these discussions, while CNN corroborated the existence of talks but cautioned that the reported financial figures might be speculative.
In response to the announcement, Meta's stock saw a decline of as much as 6% on July 17 before recovering slightly to close down approximately 2%.
Should this deal go through, it would be smaller than Anthropic's current contract with SpaceX, which is valued at $45 billion for three years and grants Anthropic access to the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. A partnership with Meta would provide Anthropic with yet another significant source of GPU resources.
This initiative signals Meta's serious intention to enter the cloud computing sector. In May, Zuckerberg indicated that the company was contemplating this move as a way to demonstrate to investors that its investments in AI could yield financial returns beyond advertising. The internal codename for this initiative has already emerged: Meta Compute.
Work on the necessary infrastructure is already underway, with projections estimating Meta's capital expenditures could reach up to $145 billion by 2026, more than double the $72 billion spent in the previous year, primarily focused on AI hardware and data centers.
Additionally, the company made headlines in May when it laid off 8,000 employees while simultaneously redirecting billions towards its AI infrastructure expansion. Recently, Meta welcomed Dave Brown, a former senior leader at Amazon Web Services, signifying that its ambitions for cloud computing extend beyond just a single leasing agreement.
"We regularly receive inquiries from companies wanting to know if we can offer them computing power at a premium to our current rates," Zuckerberg remarked in October 2025.
