Anthropic in Talks to Lease $10 Billion in Computing Power From Meta, a Direct Rival
According to CNBC, Anthropic is in very early talks to lease computing capacity from Meta in a deal that could reach $10 billion over two years, an unusual arrangement between two companies that compete directly through Claude and Llama.
A Negotiation Still at an Early Stage
On July 17, 2026, CNBC reported that Anthropic is in very preliminary talks to lease computing capacity from Meta, a negotiation that could result in a contract worth up to $10 billion over two years. According to the report, echoed by Yahoo Finance, Quartz and MLQ News, the deal's structure would have Anthropic paying Meta in monthly installments, with either party able to exit the contract early. The talks remain at an early stage and may not result in a signed agreement.
How the Proposal Reached the Table
According to CNBC, it was Anthropic itself that proposed the deal to Meta, back in June 2026. The move comes as Meta signals interest in becoming a cloud infrastructure provider: in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors the company was weighing entry into the cloud computing business as a way to show that its billions in AI spending can generate revenue beyond internal improvements to products like Facebook and Instagram. Meta projects up to $145 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, most of it going into AI infrastructure.
Smaller Than the SpaceX Deal, Still Enormous
The potential Meta contract would be smaller than the deal Anthropic already holds with Elon Musk's SpaceX: $45 billion over three years for computing capacity at the Colossus 1 data center. Even so, $10 billion over two years would place Meta among Anthropic's top infrastructure suppliers, alongside names like Amazon and Google, which have already invested billions in the company.
The Irony of Supplying a Llama Rival
The arrangement creates an unusual dynamic: Meta, which builds its own Llama family of models and competes directly with Claude in the same market, would also become one of Anthropic's infrastructure suppliers. This kind of relationship, where product rivals turn into infrastructure partners, has appeared before in the tech industry, but rarely at a multibillion dollar scale and between two of the names most talked about for billion dollar AI IPOs in the coming years.
Why It Matters for AI Buyers in Brazil
For agencies and SMBs that depend on the Claude API, the deal, if finalized, would likely mean more available computing capacity and lower infrastructure bottleneck risk for Anthropic, currently the AI lab with the fastest growing annualized revenue. At the same time, the episode reinforces a pattern already visible in Anthropic's other recent contracts, including SpaceX, and in the broader market read on the compute race: none of the major AI companies appears willing to depend on a single infrastructure supplier, not even a direct competitor. It is worth watching whether the negotiation moves past the preliminary stage in the coming weeks.