Meta’s $10 Billion Anthropic Pitch Makes It Landlord to a Rival

Meta Platforms is discussing a deal to lease Anthropic up to $10 billion in computing power over two years. The talks are early, Anthropic pitched the idea in June, and Meta is still weighing the terms, according to a New York Times report that rattled Meta’s stock on Friday.

The arrangement would hand Anthropic more of the chips it needs to keep Claude running at scale. It would also hand Meta something stranger: a seat on both sides of the table. Meta already pays the cloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius tens of billions of dollars combined for computing capacity, and Wall Street has spent the past two and a half weeks watching those same companies get punished every time Meta signals it wants to sell compute instead of just buying it.

Anthropic Made the First Move in June

The proposal came from Anthropic’s side, not Meta’s. People familiar with the discussions told CNBC and the New York Times that Anthropic pitched the arrangement in June, and Meta has been reviewing the terms since, with no signed agreement yet and no guarantee one emerges.

If it goes through, Anthropic would send Meta monthly payments across a two-year term, and either company could walk away before it ends. Both firms declined to comment when reporters asked.

The number is smaller than it first sounds next to Anthropic’s other infrastructure bets. In May, Anthropic struck a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX worth $45 billion over three years, roughly $1.25 billion a month, for GPU capacity at the Colossus 1 cluster in Memphis. A $10 billion, two-year Meta arrangement would be the smaller cousin, not the headline deal, in Anthropic’s compute portfolio.

The Capex Math Behind Meta’s Pivot

Meta’s own spending explains why it wants a paying tenant. The company could spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, more than double the $72 billion it spent the year before, most of it on AI infrastructure.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, told shareholders in May that entering the cloud computing business was on the table, and that outside firms had been approaching Meta almost every week asking to buy spare capacity. A few numbers capture the shift underway:

• $145 billion is Meta’s projected 2026 capital budget, weighted toward data centers and chips.
• $72 billion is what Meta spent on capex in 2025, meaning the new figure is more than double.
• Dave Brown, a former longtime senior Amazon Web Services executive, is set to join Meta as it builds out the new business, CNBC has confirmed.

None of that spending shows up as advertising revenue. Turning it into a cloud business, internally called Meta Compute, gives Zuckerberg a new number to show investors beyond engagement metrics.

CoreWeave and Nebius Already Know This Feeling

The market saw this exact tension coming, weeks before Anthropic’s name entered the story. On July 1, Bloomberg reported that Meta was building Meta Compute to sell excess GPU capacity to outside developers. Nebius and CoreWeave shares fell roughly 15 to 17 percent that day, while Meta’s stock rose about 9 to 10 percent.

The reason is straightforward. CoreWeave’s own third-quarter disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows an up to $14.2 billion multi-year deal with Meta signed in 2025. CoreWeave expanded that relationship again in April, adding roughly $21 billion more in capacity commitments running through December 2032. Nebius, separately, agreed in March to provide Meta with $12 billion in dedicated capacity plus an option on another $15 billion, a combined commitment of up to $27 billion starting in 2027.

Meta is not a customer for these two companies. It is close to being the customer. And CoreWeave has since fallen 35 percent from its 2026 high, with Nebius down nearly 25 percent, as investors price in the risk that their biggest tenant becomes their newest landlord.

Gil Luria, a managing director at the research firm D.A. Davidson, said the risk falls unevenly.

The impact of adding Meta’s capacity to the market is more likely to be on neoclouds than the big hyperscalers. Those companies like CoreWeave and Nebius rely on Meta for their growth and Meta may not need them anymore.

Here is the tangle in full. Meta pays CoreWeave and Nebius a combined sum north of $48 billion for compute, while weighing a $10 billion deal to sell compute to Anthropic, whose Claude models compete for the same enterprise customers Meta’s own AI assistant is chasing. Everyone in this chain is simultaneously a supplier, a customer and a rival to someone else in it.

A Former Bitcoin Miner Becomes Anthropic’s Landlord

Anthropic isn’t waiting on Meta to solve its compute crunch. Earlier this month, it signed a 20-year lease with TeraWulf, a company that started out mining Bitcoin and has spent the past year converting its power sites into AI hosting campuses. The deal, covering a Kentucky campus expected to generate around $19 billion in revenue over its initial term, dwarfs TeraWulf’s own roughly $12 billion market value.

The Hawesville, Kentucky site sits on a former aluminum smelter with existing power lines, cutting years off construction timelines. It will support about 401 megawatts of capacity, with first power due in the second half of 2027 and the full campus running by early 2028. TeraWulf’s chief executive, Paul Prager, said the agreement was a milestone.

The Anthropic lease validates our strategy and establishes a long-duration revenue stream with one of the world’s leading AI companies.

Anthropic is spreading its compute bets across an unusually wide field this year alone:

• A $45 billion, three-year lease of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 cluster in Memphis
• A 20-year, $19 billion campus lease with TeraWulf in Hawesville, Kentucky
• A multi-gigawatt Trainium chip agreement with Amazon
• A proposed, still unsigned $10 billion arrangement with Meta

Wall Street’s read on TeraWulf itself is split. Citi initiated coverage with a Buy rating and a $36 price target after the lease news, and Compass Point raised its own target to $40 from $28. Some valuation models, meanwhile, put fair value closer to $18, well below where the stock has traded since the announcement.

How Soon Could Anthropic Actually Go Public?

Anthropic could list on the Nasdaq as soon as October, ahead of both OpenAI and DeepSeek, after filing confidential IPO paperwork in June at a $965 billion valuation. Bankers led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase have begun scheduling meetings between Anthropic executives and prospective investors, a step that typically precedes a formal roadshow.

Those meetings are the clearest sign yet that Anthropic’s listing is moving from plan to process. A May funding round pushed Anthropic’s valuation past OpenAI’s $852 billion for the first time, and a trillion-dollar bet landing before OpenAI would make Anthropic the first pure-play AI company to debut above that threshold. OpenAI, for its part, has pushed its own listing plans back from this fall to 2027, while Chinese developer DeepSeek is also preparing for an eventual listing on a later timeline.

• What we know: Anthropic filed a confidential S-1 with the SEC on June 1, its bankers are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, and its last private valuation was $965 billion.
• What’s unconfirmed: The exact October pricing date, the final offer size, and whether market conditions hold long enough for the timeline to survive intact.

A Bumpy Regulatory Year Before the Biggest Test

Anthropic’s run into the IPO has not been smooth. In June, the U.S. Department of Commerce ordered the company to cut off foreign nationals from its newly launched Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models over unspecified national security concerns, forcing Anthropic to suspend both worldwide since it could not verify users’ nationality in real time.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick restored access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by early July, though Mythos 5, the more specialized cybersecurity sibling model, remains limited to a small group of trusted U.S. organizations working on critical infrastructure defense through Anthropic’s Glasswing program rather than general release. The episode was the latest turn in a relationship that swung the other way earlier this year, when a federal judge blocked the Pentagon’s attempt to brand Anthropic a supply chain risk and halted an order that federal agencies stop using Claude entirely.

Anthropic has also had to manage its image outside Washington. An ad campaign that triggered an anti-AI backlash added to a year in which the company has had to fight on regulatory, reputational and infrastructure fronts all at once, right as it prepares for the highest-stakes moment in its five-year history.

The Pre-IPO Tokens Anthropic Says Are Worthless

None of Anthropic’s actual equity is available to ordinary retail investors yet, and won’t be until the Nasdaq listing happens. Accredited investors can get exposure through secondary marketplaces like Forge Global and Hiive, but Anthropic itself has drawn a hard line around anything beyond that.

In May, the company warned eight named secondary platforms that unauthorized transfers are void, saying it would not recognize any unapproved sale of its private shares on its books, including tokenized products built to mimic exposure to its stock. That warning matters most for crypto-native traders using specialized platforms to buy tokens pegged to pre-IPO shares of high-value AI firms; Anthropic’s position is that those tokens carry no claim on the actual company, whatever a trading screen implies.

Meta reports second-quarter earnings in late July. Analysts are expected to press Zuckerberg directly on whether Meta Compute has a name, a launch date and an Anthropic contract attached to it by then.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Meta-Anthropic compute deal actually signed?

No. The talks are still preliminary, both companies declined to comment when reporters asked, and people familiar with the discussions told CNBC there is no guarantee the negotiations produce a signed agreement.

Why are Bitcoin miners turning into AI data center landlords?

Mining margins tightened after a recent Bitcoin halving cut rewards, pushing miners toward steadier income. TeraWulf is the most visible example with its Anthropic lease, but Core Scientific and IREN are pursuing similar shifts from mining rigs to AI hosting capacity.

Could Anthropic’s October IPO timeline slip?

It could. OpenAI already pushed its own listing from this fall to 2027, and Anthropic’s bankers have not set a firm pricing date, meaning the October window depends on market conditions holding through the fall.

What is Claude Mythos 5, and can the public use it?

Mythos 5 is a cybersecurity-focused sibling to Claude Fable 5. It remains restricted to roughly 100 trusted U.S. organizations working on infrastructure defense through Anthropic’s Glasswing program, rather than being generally available like Fable 5.

Can retail investors buy Anthropic shares before the IPO?

Not through ordinary brokerage accounts. Pre-IPO access is limited to accredited investors on platforms like Forge Global and Hiive, and Anthropic has explicitly warned that unauthorized transfers, including tokenized versions of its shares, are void and carry no real ownership claim.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Pre-IPO shares, tokenized products and newly listed stocks all carry significant risk, and readers should consult a licensed financial adviser before acting on anything here. Figures are accurate as of publication and may change before any Anthropic listing.