The AI industry is under growing pressure to justify trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending, and two of its biggest players are now moving to commercialize their investments in new ways.
xAI signed a deal with Anthropic to rent out data center capacity for $15 billion per year, essentially assisting a rival in its development. Meanwhile, Meta is looking to charge AI developers for access to advanced models and capacity as part of its latest subscription offerings.
Meta is also looking to embed technical staff in corporate partners to help them integrate its AI models. In addition, Meta may want to rent out data center capacity to other businesses if it ends up with more space than it needs.
The monetization push comes as evidence builds that AI is not yet generating the returns its investors expected. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among nearly 6,000 CEOs, CFOs, and other executives, nine in ten reported no impact on employment or productivity from AI over the past three years. The same executives predicted AI would boost productivity by an average of 1.4%, raise output by 0.8%, and cut employment by 0.7% over the next three years. Those projections are modest against the scale of investment flowing into the sector.
Uber Operations Chief Andrew Macdonald recently noted it is becoming harder to justify AI costs within the company. He said the company has consistently exceeded its AI token usage budget, but that higher token usage has not translated into a proportional increase in useful consumer features.
Meta’s own AI Superintelligence Chief Alexandr Wang acknowledged the backlash directly. In a recent interview, Wang said the industry has not yet demonstrated in a real way how AI is actually a tool for personal empowerment or how it makes people’s lives a lot better. He noted that developers hold a very positive view of AI because it has transformed the way they build, but that moment has not yet arrived for everyone else.
Rising competition is adding further pressure. China-based AI developers are rolling out less expensive models that could undercut massive US projects. Consumer sentiment around AI is also declining as more AI options that offer little obvious value get pushed into every other app.
The deals Meta and xAI are striking now reflect a structural reality: building AI infrastructure is expensive, but monetizing it broadly remains unproven. Renting out capacity and embedding technical staff in corporate clients are both ways of generating revenue from assets that are not yet paying for themselves through consumer products alone.
