- A Meta-owned cloud business would be “definitely on the table”
- Continued data center expansion will boost company’s ongoing AI efforts
- All computing is allocated, but any future surplus could be sold to customers.
At its annual shareholder meeting, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that a cloud business could be “definitely on the table” as the company continues to expand its data center footprint to support artificial intelligence programs.
If Meta were to go down the cloud computing path, it would have to go up against very established hyperscalers. Amazon’s business already occupies a third of the market, and Microsoft and Google jointly own another third.
Zuckerberg ultimately noted that if Meta ends up with excess computing infrastructure as part of its ongoing AI efforts, it could sell or lease that extra capacity to outside customers.
“Almost every week we have different companies coming to us from outside asking us to implement an API service or asking if we have computing that they can buy from us at a premium to the price we bought it at,” he added.
Although the company does not currently sell cloud to its customers, it continues to invest heavily in artificial intelligence. AI-related capital spending by 2026 is now estimated to be between $125 billion and $145 billion. That’s just a touch behind the capital spending estimates of Google parent Alphabet ($175 billion to $185 billion), Microsoft ($190 billion) and Amazon ($200 billion).
Zuckerberg explained that the reason Meta hasn’t launched its own cloud computing yet is that it currently has a use for all the capacity it’s ready to build, but that the company is confident in continued investments because if it didn’t use all that capacity, it could ultimately sell it to customers.
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