Meta’s data center plans could help solve its AI spending problems

Meta (META) stock has slid about 4% over the last year amid concerns about its massive AI data center investments. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have a plan to make a return on that spending beyond Meta’s traditional advertising business.

Last week, he told Bloomberg that renting data center space makes sense given ongoing industrywide constraints on AI computing. Zuckerberg has been hinting at using excess capacity in recent investor calls, though he hasn’t committed to it yet.

But SpaceX (SPCX) has proven such a move can be quite lucrative. The company has inked deals to rent capacity to Anthropic and Google worth billions.

“Zuckerberg is probably like, ‘If we do have some excess capacity— and we do want to do the SpaceX type of deals they cut with Anthropic and Google — maybe we’ll do that, and we’ll monetize half a [gigawatt] or one [gigawatt],’ whatever the excess is,” TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge told Yahoo Finance.

Entering the data center business, however, would also mean entering into direct competition with the likes of Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), as well as smaller neocloud companies like CoreWeave (CRWV).

Taking advantage of early spending

In 2025, Meta spent a whopping $72.2 billion on capital expenditures, with the bulk of that going toward its AI build-out. And it plans to spend even more this year: between $125 billion and $145 billion.

That prodigious outlay is going toward facilities like Meta’s upcoming Canadian data center announced last week, as well as toward expanding its massive Hyperion data center in Louisiana, which will support 5 gigawatts of capacity.

Meta’s spending, however, has given some investors pause over concerns that it’s overinvesting in data center space. 

During the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call, however, Zuckerberg said he believes it makes sense to frontload AI spending now so Meta can quickly capitalize on AI advances in the future rather than playing catch-up.

If the company overbuilds, he contends, Meta could allocate additional capacity to other internal efforts, he’s said. 

If it has even more capacity left over? Meta could serve it up to external parties eager for computing. And that could be a boon to the company.

“In a market choked by grid power shortages and hardware bottlenecks, [Meta] can clip a fat coupon by leasing some capacity — in the CEO’s own words, ‘at some premium to what we’ve bought it at,’ ” Jefferies analyst Brent Thill wrote in an investor note.

If Meta does end up leasing out its data center space, the next question becomes, for how long? SpaceX’s deal with Anthropic technically runs through May 2029, but either party can call it off with 90 days’ notice.

“I think what [Meta is] doing is they want to have the experience of doing it, see what the margins are like, see what the costs are like … they have to figure out that whole business, because it’s obviously totally different than anything [Meta has] ever done before,” explained TECHnalysis Research founder and chief analyst Bob O’Donnell.

There’s also the fact that starting up a cloud business means Meta will have to contend with established players like Amazon.

But according to Blackledge, the need for AI computing means there’s plenty of room for Meta to elbow its way into the market.

“It’s not a zero-sum game. And particularly, in this moment, there’s just not enough capacity,” he said, adding that Google said it will double its capital expenditures this year and still face capacity constraints.

All that’s left for Meta now is for Zuckerberg to let the world know if he’s moving forward with the plan or not.

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on X at @DanielHowley.

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