Google strikes big win with $10 billion Meta cloud deal

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Google has won a six-year, $10 billion cloud contract from Meta, supporting the tech giant’s plans to ramp up investment in AI.

According to two people who spoke to The Information, the deal covers the use of Google Cloud’s datacenter servers, storage, networking and other services.

A source close to Google has since told ITPro that the story is correct.

The agreement is a big coup for Google, and follows a recent deal with OpenAI which saw it pry away business away from Microsoft Azure. It will be the biggest ever for the company's cloud unit.

Google has been trailing behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in the cloud market - but it’s catching up, recording growth of more than 30% last year, according to Canalys, compared with just 17% for AWS.

Meanwhile, according to Gartner, AWS still leads the pack in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud market, with a 37.7% market share.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has seen its market share rise from 23% to 23.9%, while Google's increased from 8.2% to 9%.

Google Cloud last month reported $2.83 billion in operating income, on $13.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter, with the unit's revenue growth of 32% ahead of the 13.8% growth for the company as a whole.

Google's cloud win to underpin Meta AI drive

This agreement forms part of Meta's big AI infrastructure drive, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that the firm plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the technology and underlying foundations to support the strategy.

"Meta believes strongly in building personal superintelligence that empowers everyone," said Zuckerberg at the end of last month.

"We have the resources and the expertise to build the massive infrastructure required, and the capability and will to deliver new technology to billions of people across our products."

In its second-quarter earnings report, the company said it plans to more than double its spend on building AI infrastructure, including datacenters.

“We expect that developing leading AI infrastructure will be a core advantage in developing the best AI models and product experiences, so we expect to ramp our investments significantly in 2026 to support that work,” said CFO Susan Li.

Meta is expanding its AI infrastructure with the construction of more datacenters, including the one-gigawatt Prometheus in Ohio and Hyperion in Louisiana - expected to eventually expand to five gigawatts - these facilities could take years to come online.

At the beginning of this month, it announced plans to work with outside partners to help fund its AI efforts, saying it planned to sell off $2 billion in datacenter assets to help do this.

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Emma Woollacott is a freelance journalist writing for publications including the BBC, Private Eye, Forbes, Raconteur and specialist technology titles.