Meta Moves Into Cloud With $10 Billion Anthropic Talks Amid Rising Doubts Over $145 Billion AI Spending
Published on 07/18/2026 at 17:06 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Meta Platforms is quietly pivoting from a pure advertising model toward selling cloud computing services, with a potential $10 billion deal to rent out AI infrastructure to rival Anthropic marking its most aggressive move yet. The negotiations, which Anthropic proposed in June, would see the chatbot maker pay monthly for access to Meta’s data centers over two years, with both parties able to exit early. If completed, the arrangement would position Meta as a direct competitor to dedicated cloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius — firms with which Meta itself signed compute agreements in recent months.
The discussions come as Meta stock shed 2.67% on Friday to close at €565.10, part of a broader rout that pulled Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft lower alongside semiconductor stocks. The S&P 500 headed for a weekly loss of more than 1%, while the Nasdaq shed over 2%. Yet Meta has still gained 14.53% over the past 30 days, despite the weekly decline of 3.62%. The shares now trade 16.63% below their July all-time high of €677.80 and roughly 25% above the 52-week low of €452.10 touched in March. The annualized 30-day volatility stands at 48.70%, and the relative strength index of 57.7 suggests a neutral technical posture.
A $145 billion question
The market’s unease centers on whether Meta’s infrastructure spending will deliver adequate returns. The company has raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from $72 billion the prior year. Analysts are also projecting an operating EBITDA of $145 billion for that year — a figure that underscores both the scale of the buildout and the high bar for monetization.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Meta?
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, when asked about return on invested capital in the coming 12 to 24 months during the first-quarter earnings call, dismissed the query as “a very technical question” and explained that Meta’s philosophy is to build products first and monetize later. Last month he acknowledged that the development of AI agents is progressing more slowly than anticipated.
BMO Capital Markets has described Meta as having “the least visible ROI story” among the big AI investors, also noting rising antitrust pressure. Wedbush analyst Ygal Arounian nonetheless rates the stock Outperform compared with Amazon, though he provided no specific price target. The consensus analyst target stands at $830.45, with the stock carrying a “Moderate Buy” rating.
From cost center to revenue stream
Meta’s cloud push is being led by Dave Brown, a former AWS executive hired to build out the infrastructure-to-rent business. Zuckerberg said nearly every week companies ask whether they can buy compute capacity. The Anthropic pact would be the first major external customer for the newly created “Meta Compute” initiative.
Should the deal close, it would put Meta in an unusual competitive dynamic. Anthropic already secures capacity from Google, SpaceX, Microsoft, Amazon and TeraWulf, and is preparing an initial public offering in October 2026. The $10 billion contract is about one-third the size of the $45 billion three-year deal Anthropic signed with SpaceX in May. Sources say the talks are complicated because Meta currently lacks the systems to sell compute like a cloud provider.
Spending spree with concrete milestones
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Meta’s capital expenditure surge is already being deployed. The company is investing roughly $9.1 billion in a Canadian data center, and its proprietary AI chip, Iris, will enter production in September with partners Broadcom and TSMC. CFO Susan Li said existing capacity is insufficient, and Meta aims to double its data center capacity to 14 gigawatts by 2027.
First-quarter results showed the underlying business remains healthy: revenue hit $56.31 billion, up 33.1% year on year, and earnings per share of $10.44 crushed the consensus estimate of $6.67. The next quarterly report lands on July 29, where investors will scrutinize whether any of the cloud pivot or chip ramp-up is translating into hard profits — or whether the spending remains a pure cost burden.
In the meantime, the broader tech earnings calendar looms. Around 80 S&P 500 companies report this week, with Alphabet leading the hyperscaler pack. Meta’s own numbers will follow shortly after. The central tension — whether advertising revenue growth can keep pace with an infrastructure bill that has doubled in a single year — is unlikely to be resolved before those results are delivered.
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