Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he gives a keynote speech at the annual MetaConnect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on September 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegoso | Reuters
as meta While it’s gobbling up land to build massive AI data centers, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there needs to be a balance when deciding whether to sell or keep excess capacity.
Of the four major U.S. hyperscalers, Meta is the only one without a business selling cloud infrastructure and services, even though its capital expenditures are comparable to its peers. But in recent months, Mr. Zuckerberg has hinted at the possibility of launching a cloud business as a way to leverage his company’s capacity inventory in a resource-constrained market.
As CNBC reported earlier this month, Anthropic is in preliminary negotiations to lease computing power from Meta.
“We’re getting a lot of offers for computing at a significant premium to what we paid,” Zuckerberg said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call after the bell Wednesday. “And our roadmap also includes more coding and productivity tools.”
Zuckerberg’s comments came after Meta released a lower-than-expected third-quarter earnings forecast and said free cash flow was down 90% from a year ago due to higher capital spending. The stock price fell more than 7% in after-hours trading, and as of Wednesday’s close it remained depressed, down 11% since the beginning of the year.
In its report, Meta raised the lower end of its 2026 capital spending outlook by $5 billion, bringing the range to $130 billion to $145 billion. last week, alphabet It raised the upper end of its guidance to $205 billion, and cash flow turned negative for the first time. and microsoft The company said in its earnings call Wednesday that capital spending this year will be about $175 billion. Amazon Results will be reported on Thursday.
Investors are looking for details on Zuckerberg’s AI strategy, which has been scattered and has seen Meta trail behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the market for top models and services.
“I think everyone wants to be clear about what they want to do with the computing business,” Jefferies analyst Brent Till said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime.”
Considering the trade-off
Mr. Zuckerberg offered few specifics about his plans, but he detailed some of the various considerations being considered.
“In running a business, of course, a common trade-off that we have to make is how much do we want to monetize something today versus developing an asset for the future,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it’s always a portfolio.”
He said it’s not just about selling capacity when considering enterprise business potential. Zuckerberg said the company has APIs and productivity services it can offer, as well as AI agents it’s building.
“And I think there’s a huge opportunity there,” he said.
But Meta needs enough computing power to meet its AI ambitions, especially as it begins aggressively rolling out new models under the leadership of AI chief Alexandr Wang. Earlier this month, Meta debuted the Muse Spark 1.1 model. According to Wang, this is “the most powerful model for agent and coding work to date” and is cheaper than products from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Alexander Wang, Chief AI Officer at Meta, at the Bloomberg Tech Conference on Thursday, June 4, 2026 in San Francisco, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“It would be foolish to basically sell all the computing for short-term profits,” Zuckerberg said.
Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that it would take some effort for Meta to jump into a company that has historically struggled, and that the company would have to learn how to do it. He didn’t mention hiring a sales force, but that would be an essential step if Meta is serious about selling to companies large and small.
“This is going to be a new strength for us to build as a company,” Zuckerberg said. “But I think it’s a really important thing for us to build on.”
Dave Brown, a longtime senior executive at Amazon Web Services, is joining the company, CNBC recently confirmed.
A big challenge for Zuckerberg as he tries to sell his vision to Wall Street is his spotty track record. Zuckerberg’s most notable fantasy was the Metaverse, a 2021 initiative to reimagine the company around a future digital world.
The project still costs billions of dollars a quarter. Metas Reality Labs, which develops virtual reality devices and wearables, lost $4.62 billion in its most recent period on revenue of just $431 million.
Still, Meta is eager to diversify beyond digital advertising, which still accounts for 98% of its revenue, and prove it can become an influential player in the AI space.
Mr. Zuckerberg is all-in.
“We understand that this is kind of a big gamble for the entire industry,” Zuckerberg said. “My personal bet is that the people who invested in this will eventually be rewarded and feel very good about it.”
Spotlight: Jefferies’ Brent Till: Meta report included ‘three’ things that could go wrong.
