FILE PHOTO: A new Facebook data center is under construction in Eagle Mountain, Utah, U.S., May 14, 2019. REUTERS/George Frey/File Photo
(Reuters) -Meta Platforms is pressing ahead with efforts to bring in outside partners to help fund the massive infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence, disclosing plans in a filing on Thursday to offload $2 billion in data center assets as part of that strategy.
The strategy reflects a broader shift among tech giants — long known for self-funding growth — as they grapple with the soaring cost of building and powering data centers to support generative AI.
The social media giant said earlier this week that it was exploring ways to work with financial partners to co-develop data centers to help finance its massive capital outlay for next year.
“We’re exploring ways to work with financial partners to co-develop data centers,” Meta Chief Finance Officer Susan Li said on a post-earnings conference call on Wednesday.
While the company still expects to fund much of its capital spending internally, some projects could attract “significant external financing” and offer more flexibility if infrastructure needs shift over time, Li said.
The company did not have any finalized transactions to announce, she said.
The disclosure in Meta's quarterly filing, however, signals that plans are firming up.
In its quarterly filing on Thursday, Meta said it had approved a plan in June to dispose of certain data center assets and reclassified $2.04 billion worth of land and construction-in-progress as "held-for-sale".
These assets were expected to be contributed to a third party within the next twelve monthsfor co-developing data centers.
Meta did not record a loss on the reclassification, which values the assets at the lower of their carrying amounts or fair value less costs to sell. As of June 30, total held-for-sale assets stood at $3.26 billion, according to the filing.
Meta declined to comment for this story.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has laid out plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into constructing AI data center “superclusters” for superintelligence.
“Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” he said.
The Instagram and WhatsApp owner on Wednesday raised the bottom end of its annual capital expenditures forecast by $2 billion, to $66 billion to $72 billion.
It reported stronger-than-expected ad sales, boosted by AI-driven improvements to targeting and content delivery. Executives said those gains were helping offset rising infrastructure costs tied to its long-term AI push.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Marguerita Choy)
