Meta Explores Renting AI Infrastructure as Chinese AI Surprises US Tech Rivals

US tech giant Meta is reportedly exploring a new venture to rent out its extensive artificial intelligence infrastructure, known as "Meta Compute." The company has invested billions into building its AI capacity and is now in early discussions, including a potential $10 billion deal over two years with AI firm Anthropic, to monetize its excess computing power. This strategic shift could position Meta as a new player in the cloud computing market, offering either direct access to raw GPU capacity or its own AI models like Muse Spark via an API.

Meanwhile, the US tech industry has been surprised by the rapid advancements of new Chinese AI models. Beijing-based startup Moonshot's Kimi K3 model has reportedly challenged top US competitors such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, even outperforming them in areas like front-end coding capability. This follows the release of Zhipu (Z.ai)'s GLM-5.2 model, which offers comparable performance to leading US models at a reduced cost, signaling a significant narrowing of the AI gap despite US restrictions on technology access.