- Meta is in early talks to lease AI computing capacity to Anthropic in an agreement reportedly worth up to $10 billion.
- The discussions highlight how access to large-scale computing infrastructure is increasingly shaping competition in generative AI
- Meta explores turning its multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure into a commercial cloud business, challenging established providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud
Anthropic has proposed leasing computing power from Meta, in a deal that could be worth up to $10 billion over two years, according to Reuters, which cited a source familiar with the matter.
Meta and Anthropic build competing foundation models, Llama and Claude, so the arrangement would put them on opposite sides of a customer relationship as well.
A deal is still taking shape
Anthropic proposed the arrangement in June, and Meta is still weighing it. Under the terms described by Reuters’ source, Anthropic would pay Meta in monthly instalments over the two-year period, though the terms remain subject to change, and either company could exit the agreement early.
The talks are in their early stages and may not result in a signed deal. The report added that the negotiations have grown more complicated because Meta does not currently run a business selling its own computing power.
Anthropic’s compute needs have grown alongside demand for Claude and Claude Code, and this is not the first time it has turned to outside cloud providers to secure capacity.
In May, it struck an agreement with Elon Musk’s SpaceX worth $45 billion over three years, or roughly $1.25 billion a month, for computing capacity at SpaceX’s Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centres in Memphis, Tennessee in Memphis, Tennessee. The prospective Meta deal would be about a third of that size.
Why Meta is considering it
Meta, for its part, has been signalling openness to selling spare compute for months. At the company’s shareholder meeting in May, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said entering the cloud computing business was “definitely on the table,” and that companies were approaching Meta “almost every week” to buy access to its AI models or spare computing capacity.
Meta expects to spend up to $145 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, more than double the $72 billion it spent the year before, largely on AI infrastructure.
A deal, should it close, would help Meta diversify beyond advertising revenue and compete with specialised compute providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius.
Rivals becoming suppliers
There is a pattern here beyond this one deal.SpaceX already sells computing capacity to both Anthropic and Google, and Google sells access to its Gemini models to Meta even as it rations its own capacity. When demand for frontier models outpaces what any single company can build on its own, direct competitors end up buying and selling compute to and from each other anyway.
Whether the Meta-Anthropic talks will actually produce a signed contract remains an open question. Meta’s own hesitation and the fact that it has no existing business selling compute are reason enough to treat the $10 billion figure as a ceiling rather than a done deal.
