Meta Platforms rose 10% after reports the company is selling surplus AI compute capacity.
Meta Platforms Inc. is developing plans for a cloud infrastructure business that will sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new vector of competition with industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Meta, which has been rushing to secure expensive data centers and other infrastructure to fuel its own artificial intelligence ambitions, is forming a business to generate revenue from excess computing power sold to outside customers, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the details aren’t public.
One potential plan includes selling access to various AI models that are hosted on Meta’s existing AI infrastructure, an approach similar to AWS’s Bedrock offering, the people said. Meta would run the data centers and chips that power the models, including its own Muse Spark models, and charge developers to access them.
The company is also considering selling access to “raw” computing capacity, akin to other so-called neocloud businesses like CoreWeave Inc., the people said. Development of these new business lines is part of Meta Compute, an internal initiative to build and manage the company’s AI infrastructure efforts, according to a person familiar with the plans. Meta Compute is led by Santosh Janardhan, Meta’s head of infrastructure; Daniel Gross, a leader inside the Meta Superintelligence Labs AI unit; and Meta President Dina Powell McCormick.
A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. The company’s plans are still in development, and it’s possible the strategy could change.
Meta has made developing AI “superintelligence” a top priority, and has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers and other AI infrastructure, like expensive chips that it deems necessary to make that happen. That investment, which has left investors anxious about Meta’s plans to earn a return on that spending, includes major computing deals with CoreWeave, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Oracle Corp., among others.
A cloud business offers one way to return some of that investment. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud have spent decades building platforms that rent access to computing power, storage and software over the internet — businesses that now command tens of billions of dollars per quarter in revenue.
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