Meta, Anthropic in talks for potential $10 billion compute lease deal, NYT reports

July 17 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms is in talks to lease computing power to Anthropic in a potential deal worth as much as $10 billion over two years, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing three people with knowledge of the discussions.

Shares of the social media giant slightly pared losses on the news to trade down more than 2% amid a wider tech selloff.

Such a deal would help Meta diversify beyond advertising by generating revenue from its infrastructure and competing with neocloud firms such as CoreWeave and Nebius, as growing adoption of advanced AI tools boosts the need for computing capacity.

The Claude Code creator would pay Meta in monthly increments over the two-year period, although the terms remain subject to change, NYT reported. The companies would be able to exit any agreement early, it said.

IPO-bound Anthropic had proposed the deal in June and Meta is considering it, the report said, adding that the talks have become complicated since Meta does not have a business selling its computing power.

According to the report, the discussions are in their early stages and may not result in a deal.

Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while Anthropic declined to comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The potential agreement echoes a strategy recently pursued by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with whom Anthropic struck a deal in May to tap the full computing power of its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.

At Meta’s 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.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported that Meta was building a cloud business to sell excess computing power and host AI models for developers.

(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)