After firing 8,000 employees, Mark Zuckerberg hints Meta may enter cloud computing space, take on AWS

Meta is one of the biggest investors in AI at the moment. The company plans to invest billions of dollars into AI this year, after cutting roughly 8,000 jobs globally. However, so far, the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm has stayed away from cloud computing – think cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft’s Azure. But now, Zuckerberg has dropped a hint that Meta may take on the likes of AWS in this space soon.

During Meta’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg was asked whether the company planned to compete against Microsoft and Amazon in cloud computing. He stated that this option was "definitely on the table."

To give you some context, a cloud computing business provides servers, data storage, or network to clients for running their technology. AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, for example, run on the cloud.

Meta keeps getting asked for cloud compute, says Mark Zuckerberg

The Meta chief claimed that many companies were reaching out to Meta asking whether they can buy compute from the tech giant. He said, as quoted by CNBC, “Almost every week there are different companies that come to us from outside asking us to both stand up an API service or asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we’ve bought it at.”

Keep in mind that Meta is the only major player to not have its own cloud computing business. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all provide cloud computing services. Elon Musk’s SpaceX recently leased its Colossus 1 supercomputer to Anthropic for running Claude AI models.

According to Zuckerberg, Meta doesn’t feel that it has additional cloud capacity to give to others at the moment. However, if Meta does identify a surplus, he says, the company could enter this space. He added, “Obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out.”

Do note that as the demand for AI tools increase, companies are increasingly looking for more computing power. Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao recently said on a podcast, “Compute that we procure is the lifeblood of our business. It is the most important thing in the company. It is the canvas on which everything else gets built.”

While establishing data centres and cloud capacity is not inexpensive, Meta plans to invest between $125 billion and $145 billion for AI-related capital expenditure this year alone. The company is also planning to start testing premium subscription plans for Meta AI in select markets.

Though the company cut 8,000 jobs on May 20, with an additional 7,000 workers being reassigned to AI-native teams, Zuckerberg has previously stated that Meta does not plan to lay off more workers this year. The company has also closed around 6,000 open roles, as it tries to reduce costs elsewhere to invest more in AI.