Meta Platforms Inc. pared steep intraday losses on Friday following reports of potential AI infrastructure expansion. According to reports from The New York Times, the stock recovered after the lease deal news emerged, with shares last trading at $651.06, down approximately 2% from the previous close. The recovery came after the stock had fallen as much as 6% earlier in the session amid a broader technology selloff. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Anthropic is moving forward with preparations for a possible October IPO, with banks arranging meetings between company executives and prospective investors. An October debut would position Anthropic as one of the first major companies from the latest generation of AI model developers to list its shares.
Meta is negotiating a $10 billion computing power lease with AI startup Anthropic over a two-year period, transforming what was previously seen as a liability into a revenue opportunity. As reported by The New York Times, the talks come at a time when Wall Street has questioned whether technology companies are spending too aggressively on AI infrastructure. Meta will spend as much as $145 billion this year, much of it on AI, which would be more than double the $72 billion it spent last year. The company has faced questions about whether its own AI models can compete with those developed by rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, and has acknowledged that it may build more data centers than it needs relative to the number of customers using its AI products. Zuckerberg hinted at this potential revenue stream during a recent investor call, stating that "almost every week, there are different companies that come to us from the outside asking us about computing power that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."
The reported agreement involves a $10 billion computing power lease with AI startup Anthropic over a two-year period. As reported by Reuters, citing The New York Times, Anthropic presented the terms in June and Meta is currently reviewing the proposal. Under the reported terms, the Claude AI developer would make monthly payments over the two-year period, with both companies retaining the option to exit the agreement before its completion. The planned agreement would require Anthropic to make monthly payments for access to Meta's computing capacity, with the lease providing access to the processing capacity needed to train and operate advanced artificial intelligence models. The proposed deal suggests that Meta's scenario of overbuilding may be closer than expected, providing a new revenue stream until demand for its own AI services catches up. According to The New York Times, the scale of the proposed deal runs about a third of the $45 billion agreement Anthropic signed with Elon Musk's SpaceX in May, which involves roughly $1.25 billion monthly payments.
The reported deal could significantly expand Meta's AI infrastructure business beyond its traditional advertising focus. According to Reuters, the proposed lease would give the social media company another way to generate returns from its computing investments beyond its advertising business. A completed agreement would place Meta in competition with CoreWeave and Nebius, two companies that supply computing infrastructure for AI workloads. The arrangement would represent a substantial investment in AI computing capabilities, potentially positioning Meta to compete more effectively in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market. However, neither Meta nor Anthropic has officially confirmed the talks or the reported financial terms of the potential agreement. Anthropic, valued near $1.2 trillion and preparing to go public, has seen demand surge since launching Claude Code, adding urgency to the company's search for compute resources.
The talks have emerged as technology companies compete for chips, electricity and data center space. Anthropic has also pursued separate long-term infrastructure arrangements, including a 20-year data center lease with Bitcoin miner TeraWulf earlier this month. The agreement is expected to supply additional computing resources for Anthropic's future AI development. Combined with its infrastructure agreements and investor meetings, these developments show how Anthropic is assembling the infrastructure required to support its models. The growing scarcity of compute has pushed direct rivals toward cooperation, with Meta itself already renting capacity elsewhere, including a $21 billion CoreWeave deal and a $27 billion agreement with Nebius. Rising compute prices now let the company consider renting its own centers out to others, creating new revenue opportunities from surplus capacity.
