SAN FRANCISCO: Shares of Metaplatforms soared more than 6% on Wall Street on Wednesday (July 1) after reports the social media giant was preparing to launch a cloud computing business to sell AI computing power to external customers.
The report, published by Bloomberg, said Meta plans to compete directly with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud by monetizing the excess computing power it has amassed as it races to develop artificial intelligence.
The company also plans to sell the AI models it designs to enterprise customers, a key emerging market for cloud computing giants, for their own use.
Meta has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and AI chips as it pursues what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “superintelligence,” spending that has fueled investor concerns about how the company will generate profits.
The company has large computing deals with CoreWeave, Google and Oracle, but its stock price has fallen in recent months on concerns about AI overspending.
Mr. Zuckerberg has previously signaled that he would be open to selling excess computing power or launching a service that would charge business customers for their AI usage measured in tokens.
“That’s definitely on the table,” Zuckerberg told shareholders during an earnings call in May.
