Meta is betting big on AI, agreeing to spend more than $10 billion on Google’s cloud services over the next six years, according to people familiar with the deal. The arrangement, which includes servers, storage, networking, and other infrastructure, marks one of the largest agreements in Google Cloud’s 17-year history.
Neither company would comment on the deal, which was first reported by The Information.
AI ambitions driving spending
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been open about his ambitions for artificial intelligence. In recent months, he has recruited researchers from rivals such as OpenAI and Apple with high pay offers, and he has spoken frequently about what he calls “AI superintelligence.”
“I’m excited to build personal superintelligence for everyone in the world,” Zuckerberg told investors during an earnings call last month.
The spending spree underscores how central AI has become to Meta’s future. The company is pouring billions into its infrastructure to support projects such as its Llama family of AI models and new features across its social platforms.
Meta’s AI costs and bold projections
Meta reported strong results in the second quarter and sharply raised its capital expenditures to $17 billion, with most of that going to AI-related investments. Looking ahead, the company expects to spend between $66 billion and $72 billion in 2025.
Overall expenses for the year are projected between $114 billion and $118 billion, with Meta warning that AI initiatives will drive even higher costs into 2026.
A strong quarter “won’t shield Meta from questions concerning the company’s future as it breathlessly tries to keep up in the AI race,” said Minda Smiley, an analyst at Emarketer.
Google’s pursuit of cloud growth
For Google, the agreement reflects a push to secure large cloud contracts as it tries to close the gap with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Earlier this year, Google also won cloud business from OpenAI, which had previously relied on Microsoft’s Azure platform.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said in July that its cloud division generated $13.6 billion in revenue and $2.83 billion in operating income during the second quarter. That marked revenue growth of 32%, well ahead of the company’s overall growth rate of 13.8%.
Meta and Google: rivals in ads, partners in AI
While Meta and Google compete fiercely in online advertising, the new deal shows how AI demands are reshaping old rivalries. Meta has long built its own data centres but is increasingly turning to outside providers to handle the scale of its AI projects. In addition to Google, it has already committed to using services from Amazon and Microsoft.
The latest deal is focused largely on AI infrastructure, according to one person familiar with the terms. Meta’s need for more computing power is expected to grow as it trains larger AI models and integrates them across its products.
Zuckerberg has described this decade as a transformative period for AI development, with Meta’s goal being to make AI available to its billions of users. But the enormous cost of that ambition is drawing scrutiny, even as Meta deepens its reliance on the very companies it competes with in other markets.
(Photo by Dima Solomin)
See also: Oracle integrates GPT-5 into databases and cloud apps
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