July 1 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms is building a cloud business to sell excess AI computing capacity, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, as tech giants seek returns on costly AI investments amid worries about overspending.
The plans are still in development and it’s possible the strategy could change, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company’s shares were up more than 7% in early trading, while shares of neocloud firms CoreWeave and Nebius fell between 10% and 12%.
The move could reduce Meta’s reliance on advertising revenue and help it take on major cloud companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet.
The Instagram parent is weighing a service that would let developers access AI models hosted on its infrastructure, including its Muse Spark models, and pay for the computing power needed to run them, the report said. This would be similar to Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock, which allows developers to access AI models from different companies.
Meta is also considering selling raw AI computing capacity, akin to neocloud providers such as CoreWeave, as part of an internal initiative called Meta Compute to expand and manage its AI infrastructure business, the report added.
Meta declined to comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report.
“This is very similar to the situation SpaceX has found itself in that led it to sell compute capacity as well,” said Gil Luria, managing director of D.A. Davidson.
“The impact of adding Meta’s capacity to the market is more likely to be on neoclouds than the big hyperscalers. Those companies like CoreWeave and Nebius rely on Meta for their growth and Meta may not need them anymore.”
Speaking at Meta’s annual shareholder meeting in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said entering cloud computing was “definitely on the table,” noting that firms were approaching Meta “almost every week” to buy access to its AI models or spare computing power.
Big Tech firms are expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year, up from around $400 billion in 2025. Meta has projected its 2026 capital expenditure at between $125 billion and $145 billion.
(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda)
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