Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI computing capacity

Meta Platforms Inc. plans to develop a cloud infrastructure business that would sell access to its massive AI computing power and models to outside customers.

This sets up a new front of competition with industry heavyweights Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

As reported by Bloomberg, Meta rushes to lock in costly data centers and infrastructures that will aid its own artificial intelligence aspirations. The corporation is now looking to make money through excess computing power by selling it to businesses.

This possibility was signalled earlier by CEO Mark Zuckerberg who pointed out in the company's annual meeting in May that selling excess capacity was “definitely on the table.”

“We haven’t done that yet, because we think that we have a use for the computer,” Zuckerberg added.

Among the possible solutions being looked at would be giving customers access to the company’s AI models via Meta’s current infrastructure, like AWS’ Bedrock service, as per Bloomberg.

The development sent the Meta stock soaring by over 7% in pre-market trading on Wednesday to about $607. This rally was because the stock had been struggling lately and has been below its 50-day moving average and fallen by more than 14% since the beginning of the year.