Meta in Talks to Rent Anthropic Its Spare AI Computing Power, Deal Could Hit $10 Billion

Meta Platforms is in talks to lease computing power to Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, in a deal that could be worth up to $10 billion over two years, according to the New York Times, which cited three people familiar with the discussions.

Anthropic proposed the arrangement in June, and Meta is still weighing the terms, the Times reported. Under the structure described, Anthropic would pay Meta in monthly installments, and both companies would retain an option to walk away early. Anthropic declined to comment. Meta did not respond to Reuters' request for comment on the report.

CNBC's Kate Rooney reported that talks are still preliminary, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meta declined to comment to CNBC as well.

Meta shares fell nearly 3% on Friday amid what the Economic Times described as a broader tech selloff, though the stock pared some losses after the Times report circulated.

Why Meta Would Rent Chips to a Competitor

Anthropic's Claude models compete directly with Meta's own Llama models, which makes the arrangement seem counterintuitive. But the economics make more sense once you look at Meta's spending.

Meta has planned capital expenditures of $125 billion to $145 billion for 2026, largely on AI infrastructure, according to figures cited by both CNBC and Crypto Briefing. That buys an enormous amount of Nvidia GPU capacity. Much of it sits idle between training runs.

Mark Zuckerberg said in May that Meta was considering entering the cloud computing business outright, an effort to show investors the company can generate revenue from AI infrastructure beyond improvements to its ad business, according to CNBC. Zuckerberg said as far back as last October that other companies were "asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at."

Meta has also hired Dave Brown, a former senior Amazon Web Services executive, as its new head of infrastructure, the Wall Street Journal reported. This move signals how seriously Meta is treating a push into renting out compute like a hyperscaler.

If a deal happens, it would put Meta in direct competition with CoreWeave and Nebius, both of which already lease GPU capacity to AI labs including Anthropic, according to the Economic Times.

Part of a Bigger Pattern for Anthropic

This isn't Anthropic's first big infrastructure play this year. Weeks earlier, Anthropic struck a deal to use computing capacity at Elon Musk's SpaceX-linked Colossus 1 data center to expand capacity for paid subscribers, according to CNBC.

Anthropic also signed a 20-year lease with TeraWulf, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, on July 6 worth roughly $19 billion for an AI data center, according to Crypto Briefing. That deal alone dwarfs TeraWulf's existing Bitcoin mining revenue, and it's part of a broader trend of crypto miners repositioning as AI infrastructure providers. CoreWeave, which also started in crypto mining before pivoting to GPU cloud services, has landed partnerships with both Meta and Anthropic totaling $21 billion in 2026, per Crypto Briefing.

Anthropic places usage limits on its most advanced models because chip access remains a bottleneck across the industry. That scarcity is the underlying reason Anthropic keeps signing enormous, multi-year infrastructure deals with anyone who has spare Nvidia capacity, whether that's a social media company, a rocket company, or a Bitcoin miner.

Infrastructure Risk and Revenue Pressure

Crypto Briefing raised a fair point that deserves more attention: concentration risk. Companies like TeraWulf are betting their entire future valuation on AI hosting demand staying strong. If Anthropic's growth stalls or the broader AI spending boom cools off, these newly retooled data centers could sit expensive and half-empty.

This concern applies equally to Meta's own $145 billion capex bet. Wall Street has been asking Zuckerberg for over a year to prove AI spending generates real returns beyond ad targeting improvements. Leasing to Anthropic would be one of the clearest signals yet that Meta is trying to answer that question with actual revenue instead of vague promises.

None of the three outlets reporting this story could independently verify the deal terms. Reuters said explicitly it could not confirm the New York Times account. The numbers, the monthly payment structure, and the early-exit options all come from anonymous sourcing in the Times report, not from either company on the record.

What happens next is straightforward: either Meta and Anthropic finalize terms and announce something concrete, or talks stall the way preliminary negotiations often do. Given that Meta hasn't confirmed it's even entering the cloud business formally, and Anthropic hasn't confirmed the $10 billion figure, the deal remains unconfirmed until one of the two companies says otherwise.