Meta is reportedly in the midst of planning a cloud computing business unit.

Shortly after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the idea was "definitely on the table," people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the company is developing plans for a cloud business that will sell access to AI computing power and models.

While Zuckerberg had said it was possible in May, he did not suggest it was a current plan, telling shareholders that, at present, the company had a use for its compute capacity. "Obviously, if we get to a point where we feel we have overbuilt, then it's an option we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out."

The new reports suggest that this is no longer the strategy.

Launching a cloud business would place Meta in competition with hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as the number of neoclouds that have sprung up in more recent years.

The company has been expanding its compute capacity dramatically, with Meta CFO Susan Li revealing the company was upping its capex expectations for the year to between $120 billion and $135bn, which she said "reflects our expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future-year capacity."

At the start of the year, the company established a new division dedicated to growing its data center capacity, dubbed "Meta Compute," which Zuckerberg said was "planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time."

Meta has also signed massive capacity agreements with cloud and neocloud providers. With Nebius, Meta inked a $27bn cloud agreement, which will initially include a $12bn agreement over five years, starting in 2027, a $21bn agreement with fellow neocloud CoreWeave, and a "multi-billion-dollar" agreement with AWS to use the cloud's Graviton5 AI chips.

Following the news, Meta shares rose nearly nine percent on July 1, while neoclouds CoreWeave and Nebius both dropped around 12 percent.

DCD has contacted Meta for comment.