Anthropic in Early Talks to Lease Up to $10B in Compute from Meta

Anthropic is in very preliminary talks to lease computing power from Meta in a deal that could be worth up to $10 billion, according to reports from the Financial Times and CNBC^1,2.

The potential arrangement would see Anthropic tap into Meta's data center infrastructure to bolster its compute capacity, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. Meta shares climbed off their lows following a New York Times report on the potential deal's scale.

The discussions come weeks after Anthropic announced a similar deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX to use computing capacity at its Colossus 1 data center to improve capacity for paid subscribers. Together, the two arrangements underscore Anthropic's strategy of making large commitments with other organizations to secure access to AI chips made by Nvidia.

ANALYSIS The pattern of Anthropic seeking compute from non-traditional cloud providers — first SpaceX, now potentially Meta — suggests the company is diversifying its infrastructure sourcing beyond established hyperscalers.

Access to sufficient AI chips remains a challenge for Anthropic, which places usage limits on its most advanced models, including Fable.

The talks also reflect Meta's evolving posture toward its infrastructure assets. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in May that Meta was considering entering the cloud computing business. In October, Zuckerberg said companies are regularly asking whether Meta has compute they could buy at a premium to what Meta purchased it at.

Meta could spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures, including for AI infrastructure, in 2026. Dave Brown, a former senior executive at Amazon Web Services, is set to join Meta as head of infrastructure.

ANALYSIS Meta's massive capital expenditure trajectory and the hiring of a senior AWS veteran to lead infrastructure position the company to monetize excess compute capacity — a move that would effectively create a new revenue stream from assets originally built for internal AI workloads.

For Anthropic, a deal of this magnitude would represent one of the largest compute-leasing arrangements by an independent AI lab, reinforcing the capital intensity required to compete at the frontier of AI development.