Zuckerberg hints at Meta cloud push, says computing capacity could be leased to outside firms

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is exploring whether to lease its AI computing infrastructure to outside firms, signaling a potential push into the cloud business as Meta looks to monetize its AI investments.

Speaking to Bloomberg in an interview published Friday, Zuckerberg said that given the high asking prices for computing resources, "it could make more sense in some cases to lease out or contract that capacity externally rather than use it all internally."

According to Bloomberg, Meta currently uses all of its computing capacity for AI model development and service operations, but is considering a business model that would make some of that infrastructure available to outside parties, given surging market demand for AI computing resources.

Zuckerberg was careful to draw a line, however, saying the discussion does not mean Meta has excess or surplus computing capacity. "I don't think anyone in the industry feels like they have too much compute," he said. "Meta is using all the computing resources it currently has."

One model under consideration would involve selling access to AI models running on Meta's own infrastructure — a structure similar to Amazon Web Services' generative AI platform Bedrock.

Zuckerberg stopped short of committing to hosting rival AI models on Meta's servers, but left the door open, saying it is "entirely possible and worth exploring."

Meta is also considering leasing raw computing capacity in the manner of "neocloud" providers such as CoreWeave, going beyond AI models to offer pure infrastructure rental.

"Even if we don't end up needing all of our compute ourselves, there's enough market demand that we could sell it under long-term contracts, the way AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Compute do," Zuckerberg said.

Meta also announced Friday that it had unveiled its latest AI model, Muse Spark 1.1, and was launching its first paid API (application programming interface) service for developers.

Of late, Meta has been aggressively expanding its AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Meta announced via its blog that it would build a 1-gigawatt data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, Canada, according to CNBC. The facility will be Meta's 33rd data center, joining others it operates in Ireland, Sweden, Singapore and elsewhere.

Bloomberg said Meta's moves show that the race in generative AI is expanding beyond technology development into competition over "AI infrastructure business" — selling data centers, computing resources and AI models.