Anthropic needs to borrow someone else's computers. The company builds AI models that require massive amounts of processing power. Processing power costs money. Anthropic would prefer to spend someone else's money.
Meta has computers. Lots of them. Sitting in data centers. Burning electricity. Anthropic wants to rent time on those machines because buying your own infrastructure is for chumps who believe in capital allocation.
This comes weeks after Anthropic cut a similar deal with SpaceX to use the Colossus 1 data center. That's right. The company that makes Claude went to Elon Musk's rocket company to find computers. Because when you think "stable business partner with no conflicts of interest," you think "guy who owns a competing AI company and tweets through ketamine fugue states."
Now they're talking to Meta. Mark Zuckerberg's Meta. The company that open-sourced Llama specifically to undercut closed AI model providers like Anthropic. Smart move. Real strategic thinking. Next they'll ask OpenAI if they can sublease some GPUs.
The talks are "early." That's PR-speak for "we sent an email and they haven't blocked us yet." Anthropic spokesman: "We're exploring all options to scale our compute." Translation: "We spent all our money on research and forgot computers aren't free."
Retail traders are currently Googling what compute means. They think it's bullish. They're wrong. They're buying call options on semiconductor ETFs because someone on Reddit told them data centers are the new blockchain. Their accounts will be margin-called before Anthropic signs a single contract.
Anthropic raised billions in funding. Billions. And now they're going door-to-door asking if anyone has spare computer capacity like a neighbor borrowing eggs.
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