Meta and Google Strike Over $10-Billion Cloud Services Deal

Meta has signed over a $10 billion cloud deal with Google. According to Reuters, the six-year Meta-Google cloud partnership is the second large deal the search giant has entered lately after signing one with OpenAI.

Partnership Between Competitors

For a long time, Meta and Google have been competing in online ads. However, Meta needs vast cloud infrastructure for its data centers. The latest Meta-Google cloud infrastructure agreement is mostly around AI. The deal paves the way for the social media giant to use Google Cloud’s storage, servers, and networking services.

Both Google and Meta are investing heavily in AI. In recent months, Meta has reorganized its AI unit and renamed it Meta Superintelligence Labs to build its family of Llama models and integrate AI across its service offerings. The unit comprises four specialized teams. The social media firm has poached top AI talent with mega salaries from competitors like OpenAI and Google in recent months. On August 21, Meta paused the hiring spree after recruiting new researchers and engineers to its AI labs.

For Google Cloud, the $10 billion AI deal with Meta is a major victory in its pursuit for expanded cloud market share. The company is looking to land huge cloud contractors as it competes with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services in the cloud infrastructure market. In July, Alphabet announced that the company recorded a 32% growth in its cloud business in the second quarter. Previously, Meta has committed to utilize cloud services from Microsoft and Amazon.

Meta’s AI Spending Forecast

News about the deal came barely a month after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that his tech company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars in building multiple AI data centers.
In July 2025, the Facebook owner increased its yearly capital spending forecasts by $2 billion, saying it plans to spend between $66 billion and $72 billion.

According to Zuckerberg, AI is making big leaps possible in Meta’s core business- which is selling Facebook and Instagram ads. Earlier this week, the tech giant unveiled an AI-powered translation feature for Instagram and Facebook Reels. The new feature allows ad creators to preserve their tone, style and align lip movement to their voiced audio.

Meta’s AI spending is expected to rise further in 2026 as costs for establishing data infrastructure and staff compensation increase. In recent months, the tech giant has been poaching top AI talent with mega salaries.

“I think there are all these questions that people have about what are going to be the timelines to get to really strong AI or superintelligence. We’ve observed the more aggressive assumptions, or the fastest assumptions have been the ones that have most accurately predicted what would happen. I think that that just continued to happen over the course of this year too,” Zuckerberg told analysts during a conference call last month.

Seeking Financial Partners

Meta is pursuing external partners to help it finance the huge infrastructure required to power its AI. Earlier this month, the company reclassified about $2.04 billion of data-center land and construction assets as held-for-sale to pursue co-development as part of its financing strategy. Major tech giants are struggling to meet the high cost of constructing and powering data centers to support generative AI.

Meta’s move to enlist external partners represents a major shift in tech companies, which have been known to self-finance growth. Last month, the social media giant said it was exploring ways to partner with financial partners to co-develop data centers in order to meet the high capital outlay.

Although Meta expects to finance much of its spending through internal sources, the company says some AI projects may attract significant external financing.