Meta Will Start Selling Its Computing Power And Ai Models

Everyone is looking for a side hustle. Meta is planning to sell its excess AI computing power and AI models to boost cash flow, Bloomberg reported yesterday. The plan to get into the cloud business comes as Meta has made hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of investments in AI that it hasn’t yet shown will pay off.

It’s hard to know whether Meta’s AI plans are panning out: Meta doesn’t separate its AI revenues from broader earnings, and the company hasn’t released many noteworthy features compared to other AI companies. But it has committed to spending $182.9 billion on AI infrastructure, including the construction of giant data centers, over the next few years. Plus, it’s offered eye-watering salaries to win over top AI talent—like a $14 billion pay package to woo Alexandr Wang from Scale AI—even as it has conducted mass layoffs.

We do know that it’s got computing power to spare, which other AI companies are willing to pay a premium for. That’s handy as Meta seeks new business opportunities to help cover all that AI spending.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg first floated the idea of introducing a cloud business last year, adding at the company’s May shareholder meeting that, “We haven’t done that yet because we think we have a use for the compute,” but that if it overbuilt, selling extra compute power would be an option.

The real AI winners are the infrastructure providers—and this could make Meta one of them. Despite wildly high speculative valuations for flashy AI companies, cloud providers like CoreWeave, AWS, and Nebius Group (along with chipmakers) are delivering the biggest returns. Elon Musk’s SpaceX made a similar cloud move earlier this year after it struck billion-dollar deals to rent out its Memphis data center to Anthropic and Google.

It’s not the only new thing Meta is trying now that Facebook is passé: The company just released a new line of AI glasses (including a Kylie Jenner edition) and, according to the NYT, is floating its own prediction markets app.—MM

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