Meta has spent billions on artificial intelligence infrastructure. Investors worried the spending was too high. Now the company says it will sell the extra computing power it is not using.
The news broke first from Bloomberg. CNBC's Jim Cramer later confirmed the report.
Meta announced it is launching a cloud division that will market its spare AI compute capacity to third parties.
CoreWeave and Nebius Group saw their stocks fall on the news. CoreWeave sank 13% and Nebius fell 15%.
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By selling excess capacity, Meta aims to recoup some of that investment while gaining a foothold in the cloud market, which is dominated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. The move also signals that Meta is confident its AI infrastructure is not only sufficient for internal needs but also valuable enough to attract external customers. Additionally, the company last year paid $14 billion to recruit Alexandr Wang away from Scale AI, underscoring its deep commitment to AI leadership even as it seeks new revenue streams.
By launching a cloud division, the company can monetize its unused computing resources, a development that reassures investors concerned about the firm's large outlays.
Meta is taking a page from Elon Musk's SpaceX, which began marketing its spare computing power earlier this year. SpaceX struck agreements with Anthropic, committing $1.25 billion monthly, and Google, pledging $920 million per month. Zuckerberg initially hinted at this cloud opportunity during Meta's third-quarter 2025 earnings call, and said in May that selling access to the infrastructure is "definitely on the table" and "an option that we have." Meta is weighing two options: providing access to its AI models or leasing raw compute capacity.
The cloud market is fiercely competitive, with giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and CoreWeave already entrenched.
This new venture offers reassurance to shareholders who had grown anxious about Meta's enormous investment levels.
The move marks a strategic pivot for Meta, which has traditionally kept its infrastructure for internal use. By opening up capacity to external clients, the company can potentially offset its massive AI investments, which have concerned Wall Street. The cloud business could also help Meta diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising.
However, it faces stiff competition from established players like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as specialized neocloud providers like CoreWeave. Investors will be watching for more detail on pricing and capacity allocation in the coming quarters.
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