Meta Goes the Way of xAI, Considers Renting Computing Power as Own Model Flails

You know the old saying: Those who can, do it; Those who can’t, rent out their space to those who can. According to a Bloomberg report, Meta is considering getting into the cloud computing business, renting out its infrastructure to other companies that want access to computing power for their AI operations, as the company struggles to get its own model to compete with leading labs.

According to Bloomberg, Meta is exploring two primary potential setups for its potential new business, which is apparently being called Meta Compute inside the company. One option would be to sell access to AI models hosted on Meta’s own data center infrastructure. Another would be to sell “raw” compute capacity on which other companies can run their own models.

Gizmodo contacted Meta for comment on his reported new business venture, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

The move to potentially open up its infrastructure to others comes as Meta has struggled to get its own AI models off the ground. The company has repeatedly reorganized its AI division, offloading massive amounts of millions of dollars to researchers and experts, and firing hundreds of people in an effort to focus its attention on building AI models that can compete with models like OpenAI and Anthropic. None of these have been particularly successful.

Earlier this year, the company released its new flagship model, the Muse Spark, and although it performed quite well in benchmark testing, it struggled to gain any real traction. Meta’s AI chief, Alexander Wang, recently called the model an “appetizer” for what Meta has to offer. But at this point, there’s no reason to believe that’s actually the case, rather than it being just marketing gimmicks that highlight how far the company has fallen behind its competitors.

That’s not great for a company that has promised to spend nearly $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone, so it’s no surprise that Meta is looking at ways to squeeze some money out of all that investment. It seems to be looking at SpaceX and its fold-in AI firm, XAI, as a model. After it became clear that Grok is not competing with marginal models in any case, but is producing pornographic content without consent, the company planned to rent its huge Colossus data center to Anthropic to run its AI model, which is really popular.

Frankly, renting computing power is probably a better business for now – although it won’t be fun to give up that server space when the bubble bursts. But hey, that’s a problem for a different quarter, no time to worry about the future when you’re trying to figure out how to generate shareholder value.