Meta Is Reportedly Building Its Own Cloud Business

Meta is reportedly developing its own cloud business that could sell access to its AI models and lease data-center computing capacity to other companies. The move would put Meta in direct competition with Amazon, Google, and SpaceX. Engadget reports: The cloud business could offer multiple services, according to [Bloomberg], like selling access to AI models run on Meta's infrastructure, or leasing the computing power of its data centers to other companies looking to train AI. Offering something akin to Amazon Web Services could help make back some of what Meta has already spent on its new bet. As part of its AI plans, the company has committed to investing $600 billion in the US by 2028. Meta has also already made more than a few expensive hires to build its AI superintelligence team. Meta Compute, the data center and AI-focused initiative Meta created in January, is currently developing the new cloud business, according to Bloomberg.

Whoops spent too much money

[hsmith]

Now they need to figure out how to recover some. Brilliant work Mark.

Re:

[leonbev]

Hey... if they offer better prices than AWS, I'd be willing to give it a try.

As the baby boomers who still use Facebook continue to die off, I'd imagine that they'll have plenty of extra data center capacity to sell on the cheap.

Re:

[coofercat]

Undercutting AWS or Google isn't that hard. Oracle (yes, Oracle, not known for 'cheap') *dramatically* under cuts both on things like egress charges - they're like 10% the price or something daft. They're also super cheap on things like load balancers and key value databases stores. But they're even more expensive on compute nodes - and you need their compute nodes for any sort of compute you want, be that a raw VM, kubernetes nodes, a managed database server - you name it.

Elsewhere, smaller providers do co

Re: Whoops spent too much money

[diffract]

What a story Mark

what

[drinkypoo]

I get why someone would purchase these services from Google, I even get why people who drank the Redmond kool-aid get them from Microsoft. I don't understand who would be stupid with to get them from Facebook but also have enough money to pay for them

Who cares?

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Like literally, who cares Meta is building a "cloud business" (whatever that means).

Re:

[RitchCraft]

"(whatever that means)" - just like all their other endeavors; it's all happy, happy, joy, joy, look what we're doing, it's going to be awesome, until reality sets in when the storm clouds start forming overhead. Don't worry, Zuck always finds a way to rain on his own parade. Nothing to see here ... move along ... move along.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Their customers and shareholders.

Cloudy with a Chance of Facebooks...

[Innovation]

If you've forgotten how to innovate, do what everyone else does.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

You have to know how to innovate in the first place to forget how to do it.

Re:

[Tablizer]

If Musk can be in the space-car-socNet-Borg-terraform-botfarm* biz, then Zuck can be in the socNet-VR-botfarm biz.

* Did I miss any?

Lets call cloud rob your data

[butt0nm4n]

.. probably more accurate. Oooo AI will rule the world.

Cnuts

I have an idea!

[paul_engr]

Build it in the metaverse!

Re:

[thesjaakspoiler]

Use Meta's AI Cloud for something useful and get acquired by Meta the next quarter

Re:

[leonbev]

I wonder if they could find a way to repurpose the CPU, RAM, and storage those thousands of unsold Meta Quest headsets they probably still have in stock. You could probably build a pretty cool cluster out of them.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

A Beowulf cluster!

Re:

[dohzer]

Before the demo they should figure out if clouds do or don't need legs.

Late to the party

[DrXym]

Anyone not already on Azure / AWS / Google sure as fuck isn't going to use Meta. And with Europeans looking to use sovereign cloud providers, and likely the same happening elsewhere there might be a move away from US providers entirely.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

Being late to the party isn't the issue. It's when he gets there he stands in the corner by himself looking like a lurker. You remember the type. Creepy.

Meta?

[BitterEpic]

I believe that you are the company that will use targeted advertising on me though unsolicited RayBan Sunglasses video recordings taken of me by your chump users?ãNo way to opt out even if I don't use your service? That is US big tech. Fuck Meta.

Suckerburg

[bubblyceiling]

Bought too much compute. Now he is wondering what to do with it

It's all going to change

[Baron_Yam]

The US is too belligerent and unreliable - nations will be switching to sovereign cloud systems and the step after that will be sovereign social media (not to control privacy, but to limit propaganda), and then the sovereign desktop (nationally maintained Linux in most cases).

Might take a decade, unless international relations get even more hostile with the US, but we're not far from a world where an American HQ is a global business liability.

Move fast and break things!!!!

[Somervillain]

So...exactly why would we choose Meta over all the more experienced and established players?...champions of the slogan "move fast and break things." (which sounds like a shitty Limp Bizkit song) Is it that halo effect from Facebook?....it's such a beloved and well run site afterall?

Isn't this akin to Bill Cosby launching a line of coffee makers? Woody Allen and Roman Polansky launching a daycare?

Re:

[noshellswill]

I've never had anything to do with Face-Book. So ... I don't know. How do they stay in business ( & grow ? ) with such a vampire reputation ? Do (some) people really really need their services  ... whatever those services might be ? Is FB like Adobe or Broad-com and have a spectrum of highly-advanced nitche products/IP  that people "in the business" cannot do without.

where all your data are belong to us

[awwshit]

Oh sure, let me sign the company up for the 'all your data are belong to us' datacenter. If they get all of my data, will it be ad supported and free?

Yeah, I'm gonna trust Zuck with my data

[shm]

I'm blocking 36k fb related domains on my network, I'm definitely gonna trust Zuck's cloud.

With hookers!

[Chris Mattern]

And blackjack!

What happens behind the scene

[sentiblue]

Imagine peeping Mark, not giving a rats ass about your privacy/confidentiality, look into your data including the encrypted ones. This will become the end of Meta.

Parse.com is the warning here

[memory_register]

Back in 2013, ages and ages ago, Facebook purchased parse.com, a backend as a service platform that had tens of thousands of projects and apps running on it. It was very similar to Google Firebase product or what is now AWS. As soon as Mark Zuckerberg lost interest, they open sourced it and shuttered all the servers and infrastructure that was running it. Massive headaches for two companies I worked with back then.

Anyone who uses any product from Meta is a fool, because they have no oversight to ke