Meta Plans Cloud Business to Take on Big Tech Rivals

Meta is planning a cloud infrastructure business that will sell AI computing power/model access.

That’s according to a report Wednesday (July 1) by Bloomberg News, which says this move would put Meta in greater competition with cloud leaders such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Already scrambling to secure the infrastructure for its own artificial intelligence (AI) projects, Meta is now forming a business to derive revenue from surplus computing power sold to outside customers, sources familiar with matter told Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.

According to the Bloomberg report, the sources say one possible plan would involve offering access to various AI models hosted on Meta’s existing AI infrastructure, similar to what AWS does with its Bedrock. Meta would run the data centers and chips powering the models, charging developers to access them.

In addition, Meta is also weighing a plan to sell access to “raw” computing capacity, similar to what “neocloud businesses” like CoreWeave offer, the sources said. The project falls under the umbrella of Meta Compute, an in-house initiative to develop and oversee the company’s AI infrastructure efforts, one of the sources said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has discussed this concept before, including during the company’s earnings call in May.

Almost every week, he said, “there are different companies that come to us from outside asking us to both stand up an API service, or asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we’ve bought it at.”

“We haven’t done that yet, because we think that we have a use for the compute, but obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out,” Zuckberg added.

In other artificial intelligence news, PYMNTS wrote last about the price adjustments Meta and other tech giants are making amid slowing consumer and enterprise usage.

“The consumer price cuts sit alongside a structural problem. Anthropic’s $200 Claude Code plan gives developers 20 times the usage of its base tier,” that report said.

“Power users on that plan can consume the equivalent of $600 to $1,500 worth of API-priced compute for a flat monthly fee …” PYMNTS added. “AI companies are cutting prices at the consumer level while absorbing the cost of heavy usage at the same time.”

Meta’s decision to start offering paid subscriptions “sharpens the competitive picture,” that report added. The Facebook owner has spent decades expanding on an ad-supported, free-access model. Testing a paid AI tier indicates that even it sees limits to what advertising can fund on its own. As covered here, Meta is also considering a $199.99 premium tier for its Hatch AI agent, which would place it directly alongside Anthropic and OpenAI at the peak of the market.