Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Is in Early Talks to Lease $10 Billion of AI Compute to Anthropic, a Potential New Revenue Stream That Could Justify Its Massive AI Spending

Meta Platforms is in early-stage negotiations with Anthropic to lease $10 billion worth of AI computing capacity over a two-year period, according to The Motley Fool. The deal would mark Meta's entry into the cloud computing business, creating a new revenue stream from the company's massive capital expenditures in AI infrastructure.

The potential arrangement would allow Anthropic, the AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, to access Meta's data center capacity while Meta monetizes assets that might otherwise sit underutilized. Meta has committed tens of billions to building out AI infrastructure, spending that has pressured margins and drawn investor scrutiny over return on investment.

If finalized, the Anthropic lease could serve as a template for additional partnerships, positioning Meta to compete in the cloud infrastructure market currently dominated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. The move would diversify Meta's revenue base beyond advertising, which still accounts for the overwhelming majority of sales.

The talks remain preliminary, with no binding agreement in place. Meta shares trade under the ticker META.