Meta is in early talks to lease computing power to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth as much as $10 billion over two years, according to a New York Times report. If it closes, it would hand Mark Zuckerberg a brand-new line of business and pull Dario Amodei’s AI lab deeper into a scramble for compute that shows no sign of easing.The move borrows straight from Elon Musk’s playbook. Musk turned SpaceX’s Colossus data centers into a rental business earlier this year, and Anthropic became its anchor tenant. Now Zuckerberg wants a slice of the same action, using the very data centers his investors keep grumbling about.Anthropic pitched the idea first, in JuneThe NYT reports that Anthropic proposed the deal in June, and Meta is weighing it. Anthropic would pay in monthly instalments across two years, with either side free to opt out early. The specifics are still moving around.The proposal is roughly a third the size of the SpaceX arrangement Anthropic signed in May. That one runs to $45 billion over three years, or $1.25 billion a month, for access to Musk’s Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 clusters in Memphis. It too came with a 90-day exit clause, a nod to how quickly things shift in AI.There’s an awkward wrinkle. Meta doesn’t sell compute yet, so it has no machinery for a deal like this. One person familiar with the talks told the NYT that this has complicated the discussions.
Why Zuckerberg suddenly wants to rent out data centers
Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion this year, most of it on AI, more than double last year’s $72 billion. Wall Street has been uneasy, questioning whether that spend is justified when Meta’s own models trail those from Anthropic and OpenAI.Renting out spare capacity is Zuckerberg’s answer. He has hinted at it for months. On a May investor call, he said companies approach Meta “almost every week” asking to buy compute at a premium, but that Meta had held off because it still had a use for the chips.The math is tempting. SpaceX has shown the model works, signing deals with Anthropic, Google and open-source startup Reflection. Meta has even hired Dave Brown, a former AWS executive, as it eyes the cloud business.
The chip shortage forcing AI rivals to share
Behind all this sits one stubborn problem: there aren’t enough Nvidia chips to go around. Anthropic, now valued near $1 trillion and headed for an IPO, has seen demand explode since Claude Code took off. It places usage limits even on its top models like Fable.That scarcity is pushing rivals into bed together. Anthropic already leans on SpaceX and Amazon; adding Meta would spread its bets further. For Meta, an Anthropic contract offers revenue while its own AI products play catch-up.Both companies declined to comment. The talks are early and may lead nowhere. But the fact that two fierce competitors are even at the table says plenty about how precious compute has become — and how far Zuckerberg is willing to copy Musk to cash in on it.
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