Shares of AI-focused neocloud providers suffered steep losses on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported that Meta Platforms is building a cloud infrastructure unit to sell excess AI computing capacity to outside customers. Nebius Group (NBIS) plunged over 13%, while CoreWeave (CRWV) fell around 9% in pre-market trading, as investors braced for a deep-pocketed competitor entering the market.
The internal initiative, called “Meta Compute,” would offer two primary services: hosted access to AI models (including Meta’s own Muse Spark models) similar to AWS Bedrock, and raw computing capacity. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had already hinted at such a move during the company’s May shareholder meeting, saying selling excess compute was “definitely on the table.”
NBIS, already up nearly 230% year-to-date with a market cap of about $69.5 billion, was especially vulnerable to the shock. The stock was also pressured by a stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report that pushed Federal Reserve rate cut expectations further out, weighing on richly valued tech names. For Nebius, heavy capital spending and rising debt heightened the sell-off — a “sell the news” reaction after its recent addition to the Nasdaq-100 index.
Meta’s own stock jumped 6% pre-market, as investors cheered the potential to monetize its massive AI infrastructure investments and offset costs. The broader pullback in neocloud stocks highlights how hyperscaler-adjacent platforms face heightened risk as Big Tech players increasingly turn their in-house capacity into commercial services.
