Meta Platforms is in negotiations to lease processing power to Anthropic in a possible transaction worth up to $10 billion over two years.
In the midst of a larger tech selloff on Friday, shares of the social media giant closed down more than 2% after significantly reducing their losses following the announcement. Long-term trading saw a little decline.
By making money from its infrastructure and competing with neocloud companies like CoreWeave and Nebius, Meta would be able to expand beyond advertising. This is because the increasing use of sophisticated AI tools increases the demand for processing power.
Although the terms are still subject to change, the Claude Code author would pay Meta in monthly increments over the course of the two years. The companies would also have the option to terminate any arrangement early.
IPO-bound Anthropic had suggested the acquisition in June, and Meta is contemplating it. However, because Meta does not have a business selling its processing power, the negotiations have gotten more difficult.
The talks are just getting started and might not end in a deal.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with whom Anthropic signed a deal in May to utilize the whole computer capacity of its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, recently adopted a similar method.
Entering the cloud was “definitely on the table,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who stated that companies were contacting Meta “almost every week” to purchase access to its AI models or extra processing capacity during the company’s May shareholder meeting.
Bloomberg News revealed earlier this month that Meta was developing a cloud company to host AI models for developers and sell surplus processing capacity.
