Should Nebius and CoreWeave Investors Be Worried About Meta's Latest AI Infrastructure Plans?

Something interesting is happening with Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) and two companies with which it has relationships -- CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS).

On the one hand, Meta recently signed a $21 billion expanded deal for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, giving Meta increased capacity to develop AI programs. Factoring in a previous $14 billion deal, Meta now has $35 billion in commitments to CoreWeave.

And similar things are happening with Nebius. Meta signed a long-term deal for AI infrastructure with the neocloud provider in March, valued at up to $27 billion over five years.

But now Meta seems to be shifting gears -- Bloomberg reports that it is now building a cloud business of its own to sell excess AI computing capacity. The report comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated Meta might consider selling overbuilt computing capacity to other companies at a premium.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

And The New York Times reports that Meta is currently in talks with Anthropic, the start-up behind the Claude large language model, to lease as much as $10 billion in computing power to Anthropic over two years.

So is Meta Platforms a valued customer or a potential competitor to CoreWeave and Nebius? That's the question that should be keeping investors up at night.

About CoreWeave and Nebius

While Meta Platforms is a prominent name in the stock market -- the operator of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms -- CoreWeave and Nebius may not be. Both companies are considered "neocloud" companies, which means they build high-performance data centers powered by Nvidia graphics processing units and then rent the computing power to customers who build, train, and operate AI-powered programs.

CoreWeave is the bigger of the two, operating 43 data centers at the end of March with 850 megawatts of active power and 3.1 gigawatts of contracted power. CoreWeave reported $2.07 billion in revenue in the first quarter, up from $982 million a year ago, with a net loss of $740 million.

Nebius is smaller, with 11 data centers, and only five of them are currently operational. But the company reports contracted capacity exceeding 3.5 GW, and its revenue increased from $50.9 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $399 million in Q1 2026. It posted a net loss for the quarter of $100.3 million.

Meta's shifting strategy

Meta Platforms and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will certainly face a lot of questions about Meta's strategy when it reports quarterly earnings on July 29. But the company has shown a willingness to take big risks.

Remember, this is the company that in 2021 changed its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms to emphasize its shift to building out the metaverse -- a virtual reality where people would presumably work, have meetings, and socialize. But that bet failed, and after investing $80 billion, Meta has started laying off some employees in its Reality Labs division.

Whether it's positioning itself to compete with CoreWeave and Nebius or considering taking on big cloud computing companies such as Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, Meta is determined to be a player in AI. As it shifts its attention away from the metaverse, Meta will have plenty of resources and willingness to spend aggressively.

Patrick Sanders has positions in Nebius Group and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.