Meta In Talks To Lease Computing Power To Anthropic In Potential $10 Billion Deal

Anthropic is reportedly in very early talks to lease computing power from Meta in a potential deal worth around $10 billion. The discussions follow Anthropic's recent compute deal with SpaceX and come as Meta explores selling excess AI capacity as part of a broader push to turn its massive infrastructure spending into a cloud business. CNBC reports: Access to enough AI chips remains a challenge for firms like Anthropic, which places usage limits on its most advanced models like Fable. [...] Meta could spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures, including for AI infrastructure, in 2026. Last October, Zuckerberg said that companies are regularly "asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."

Meta

[eneville]

At least Meta are admitting their compute isn't in demand

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

At least Meta are admitting their compute isn't in demand

Then why are they still building more?

https://globalnews.ca/news/119... [globalnews.ca]

Re:

[allo]

Because they can rent it out to Anthropic.

Re:

[eneville]

Why employ geologists when your oil fields are dry?

If you have some capital and your core business is shrinking, you're going to try and invest in something that you speculate will have a ROI later. In this case, they're trying to get ahead of the AI demand and be a infrastructure provider.

Re:

[outsider007]

More like it's the only thing they have to offer.

Excess compute that was built out for a feature?

[Fly Swatter]

I wonder if dropping the Instagram images from use in AI [slashdot.org] caused excess compute that Meta now built out for now reason :D

Bubble popping

[thecombatwombat]

A lot of people, most loudly Ed Zitron have suggested for a while if this happens it should be taken as the sign the bubble is popping.

Not only is the supposed insatiable demand story not true, but the only buyers are Anthropic and OpenAI.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

The bubble is propped up by the illusion that AI technology is inherently expensive to make and use, so that the big model houses like OpenAI and Anthropic cannot be beaten unless a new player invests comparable amounts of money and uses comparable numbers of compute. Open weights Chinese companies are leading the way to attack that illusion head-on.

Getting "too big to fail?"

[cosmicl]

Probably not yet. But the growth trajectory of the size and scope of these deals and the wealth and power of the Epstein billionaire class making these bets is concerning. Deals for ever more energy, compute, chips, AI algorithms for sale and rent, data centers, and data scraping, especially personal data, obtained legally or otherwise. These billionaires operate in different world where they are the superior chosen few, and the rest of us are there for the fleecing.

They're All Just Trading Hats

[Gilmoure]

Nvidia is loaning money to AI companies to purchase Nvida GPUs, AI companies are renting out racks to other AI companies, folks are leaning they can run slightly smaller versions of the models on in-house systems.

[actress Clara Peller: "Where's the profits!]

Re:

[angel'o'sphere]

Nvidia is loaning money to AI companies to purchase Nvida GPUs,
That is basically what happened during the "dot com bubble crash", for example SUN lending out money to make companies like Toys Are Us great (no idea what happened to them). When the bubble busted SUN lost an incredible amount of money. So they got bought by Oracle, mostly.