Meta Platforms has agreed to a cloud computing deal worth at least $10 billion with Alphabet-owned Google, sources familiar with the matter said, as the social media giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence.
اضافة اعلان
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, will pay no less than $10 billion over six years to use Google Cloud’s servers and storage capacity, aiming to rapidly increase its computing power amid competition in the AI tools race, according to the sources, who requested anonymity due to the confidentiality of the agreement.
Billions Invested in AI
The deal marks the first major cloud agreement between Meta and Google, which ranks third in the cloud market after Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure.
The news was first reported by The Information, and Google confirmed the agreement without further comment. Meta declined to comment. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI and the supporting infrastructure.
While Meta owns more than 20 data centers and is actively building more—including a 372,000-square-meter (4 million sq. ft.) project in Louisiana—some will not be operational for years. Zuckerberg aims to provide maximum computing capacity to every AI researcher as quickly as possible.
First Direct Cloud Collaboration
Although Google Cloud has previously collaborated with Meta, it has never served as the primary provider of infrastructure services. In 2023, Google Cloud announced it would make versions of Meta’s open-source AI model, LLaMA, available through its Vertex AI platform, allowing developers to access and build applications using Meta’s AI models. Meta also conducted limited trials using Google Cloud technologies.
Meta Enhances LLaMA Capabilities
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandip Singh and Robert Biggar noted in a Thursday memo that the multi-year deal “demonstrates” Google Cloud offers lower AI text unit pricing than other major cloud providers. They added that Meta is likely to focus more on improving LLaMA’s reasoning capabilities in response to growing momentum in advanced AI models for research, coding agents, instant summarization, and translation.
