Anthropic in talks with Meta over $10b data center compute lease

AI startup Anthropic is in talks with Meta over a deal to lease computing resources worth trillions of won.

According to Reuters and other outlets, Anthropic last month proposed leasing data center computing resources to Meta for up to $10 billion over two years. Meta is reviewing the offer.

The lease payments would be made in monthly installments, and the proposed terms include an early termination clause that either party could invoke. Negotiations remain at an early stage.

In May, Anthropic signed a three-year agreement to lease 300 MW of computing capacity at the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee — owned by xAI, SpaceX's AI subsidiary — for $45 billion. More recently, it signed a 20-year data center lease with AI infrastructure operator TerraWulf.

The negotiations give Meta an opportunity to monetize its large AI investments. Amid growing criticism that the company has built out data center capacity well beyond what its current services require, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has left open the possibility of entering the cloud business by selling computing resources to outside companies.

At Meta's shareholder meeting in May, Zuckerberg said outside companies reach out nearly every week seeking to purchase the company's computing capacity, adding that Meta has not yet begun selling because "we think we have uses for the compute ourselves," but that doing so would be "an option we could choose if we feel like we've built more infrastructure than we need."