Meta keeps reinventing itself in search of a better business model; after personalized ads, the metaverse, and now AI, could renting out its computing infrastructure be next?
Meta has raised the possibility that it could be joining the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in offering cloud services at some point in the future — although potential customers shouldn’t be adding the company to their suppliers list just yet.
When asked about plans for offering such services at the company’s annual shareholders meeting, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said there was a possibility of the company competing with the major hyperscalers. “It’s definitely on the table.”
He explained that different companies were approaching Meta asking for the company to offer an API service or to buy compute services at a premium price. “We haven’t done it yet, because we think we have a use for the compute, but when we feel we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have.”
Meta has been active in developing its data centers over the past few years, so there will be a possibility of some excess capacity. It is also developing its own AI chips.
For the moment, though, the company may well need all the capacity it can build: Zuckerberg said that the launch of Muse Spark, a new AI model from Meta Superintelligence Lab, had resulted in large increases in Meta’s AI usage.
