Meta Platforms is in early-stage talks to lease computing capacity to Anthropic in an arrangement that could be worth up to US$10 billion over two years, a source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters on July 17. If it closes, the deal would formally push Meta into the neocloud market and give Anthropic another hyperscaler-scale contract to fuel Claude training and inference ahead of its expected IPO.
Anthropic Proposed The Deal In June
According to the source, Anthropic first floated the arrangement in June. Under the proposed terms, Anthropic would pay Meta in monthly increments across two years, with either party able to exit early. Talks are described as complex because Meta does not yet have a productized business selling its computing power, and the discussions may not culminate in a signed contract.
Meta's Neocloud Ambitions Take Shape
At Meta's shareholder meeting in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said entering cloud computing was "definitely on the table," noting that AI companies were approaching Meta "almost every week" to buy access to models or spare capacity. Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that Meta had begun building a cloud business to monetize excess GPUs and host third-party AI models, adding pressure on incumbent neocloud specialists including CoreWeave and Nebius. Meta shares closed down more than 2% on Friday amid a broader tech selloff.
Anthropic's Multi-Hyperscaler Strategy
The proposed Meta deal echoes an agreement Anthropic struck in May with Elon Musk's SpaceX-adjacent xAI for full access to the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Anthropic is also a large customer of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, and analysts have flagged its compute cost curve as one of the key questions for an IPO listing that Bloomberg reports could come as soon as October. The company most recently drew headlines for Ode's Blackstone-backed launch on top of Claude.
Why It Matters
A signed contract would validate the neocloud thesis at the hyperscaler tier: even the operator of Facebook and Instagram now sees selling raw AI capacity as a durable second business line. For Anthropic, it is insurance against single-source concentration in an era when GPU allocation is the most valuable commodity in enterprise software.
Reporting based on Reuters coverage published by Yahoo Finance and CNBC, and prior statements by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's May shareholder meeting.