Meta in talks for $10bn AI compute lease with Anthropic, source says

Meta Platforms and Anthropic are in discussions over a potential $10 billion compute lease, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters.

A deal of that size would rank among the largest AI-compute arrangements on record, underscoring the soaring capital demands of training and running advanced artificial-intelligence models. The figure, if finalized, would represent a multibillion-dollar commitment by Meta to provide data-center capacity to a rival AI lab.

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, has been aggressively expanding its AI infrastructure and research talent, while Anthropic — the maker of the Claude family of models — has sought large-scale compute to train and serve its systems. The reported talks point to a growing practice of AI developers leasing capacity from one another and from cloud providers rather than building all of it in-house.

The discussions arrive as the broader industry scrambles to secure data-center capacity, chips and power, a buildout that has itself become a fresh source of inflation and supply-chain pressure (see AP's analysis on AI build-out and inflation risk). Demand for specialised processors and electricity has tightened markets for both.

As with similar reported negotiations, the talks may not lead to a finalized agreement, and terms could change. Reuters noted the information came from a single source and that details of any potential contract were not yet public.