{"text":[[{"start":7.95,"text":"Meta is in early talks to rent its computing power to Anthropic in what could be a multibillion-dollar deal, as the social media company plans a new cloud-computing business."}],[{"start":17.35,"text":"Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, proposed the deal in June, according to people familiar with the matter, as it seeks new providers of computing power to keep pace with demand and serve its models to clients."}],[{"start":30.1,"text":"The deal with Meta could be worth as much as $10bn over two years and would be paid in monthly increments over that period, one of the people said. The talks are in early stages and a deal is not guaranteed, several people said."}],[{"start":46.25,"text":"Despite spending tens of billions of dollars on chips, data centres and power, even the largest tech companies are battling to secure enough computing power to support surging demand for their frontier models and AI services."}],[{"start":60.85,"text":"A deal with Meta would follow a similar data centre agreement between the AI lab and SpaceX, worth $1.25bn a month to Elon Musk’s rocket conglomerate."}],[{"start":71.7,"text":"Anthropic has raised tens of billions this year to fund infrastructure and has struck major contracts with Amazon and Google’s cloud businesses."}],[{"start":81.05,"text":"“The SpaceX model I think is quite interesting in terms of just making these short-term deals that are at a big premium,” Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Bloomberg interview last week. “So we get offers for all kinds of stuff like this and we’ll evaluate them and see what makes sense.”"}],[{"start":98.35,"text":"Meta has joined cloud computing giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google in pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its fleet of data centres, even though the social media group has only built facilities for its own use."}],[{"start":111.14999999999999,"text":"The prospective deal with Anthropic comes as Zuckerberg’s group is planning to launch its own cloud-computing business in order to generate revenue from any excess computing capacity, said people familiar with the matter. "}],[{"start":123.49999999999999,"text":"Such a move would require Meta to shoulder high upfront costs and develop sales relationships with big companies in order to compete with well-established rivals."}],[{"start":134.5,"text":"As one option, Meta is discussing potentially renting out access to raw computing capacity, one of the people said. It is also considering selling its AI models, such as Muse Spark, while hosting them in its data centres, the person added."}],[{"start":148.9,"text":"“The offers that you get for using the compute are so high that it may make sense, in some cases, to rent out or consider those kind of deals instead of your own internal uses,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg. "}],[{"start":163.3,"text":"He added this did not mean Meta had overbuilt or had excess computing power available."}],[{"start":168.75,"text":"The company is planning to spend as much as $145bn this year on capital expenditures, particularly on building out its AI infrastructure. It is also racing to develop its Muse Spark models to compete with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. It is unclear if it can catch up with the frontier labs and grow significant consumer or business demand for those models."}],[{"start":192.8,"text":"The FT in June reported the discussions around a cloud computing business were taking place among the new ‘Meta Compute’ team, which includes Meta president and former banker Dina Powell McCormick, longtime head of global infrastructure Santosh Janardhan and entrepreneur Daniel Gross."}],[{"start":210.95000000000002,"text":"The New York Times first reported the Anthropic deal. "}],[{"start":214.9,"text":"Meta and Anthropic declined to comment."}],[{"start":224.10000000000002,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784504563_1402.mp3"}