Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company could enter the cloud computing market if it overspends on data centers and ends up with excess capacity.

“It’s definitely on the table,” Zuckerberg said on Wednesday at Meta’s annual shareholder meeting, in response to a question about potentially competing with Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing.

Zuckerberg reiterated comments made on an earnings call last year, noting that “almost every week there are different companies that come to us from outside asking us to both stand up an API service or asking if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we’ve bought it at.”

Of the four giant hyperscalers in the U.S. Meta is the only one that doesn’t have a cloud infrastructure and services business. Meanwhile, Meta’s spending to fuel artificial intelligence development is right up there with its rivals.

In April, Meta raised its 2026 guidance for AI-related capital expenditures to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Meta shares sank 7% despite better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, underscoring concern about the company’s hefty AI spending.

Zuckerberg is reminding Wall Street that it has the ability to rent out some of its computing resources.

“We haven’t done that yet because we think that we have a use for the compute,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday. “Obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have, and that is partially what gives us confidence in investing in building this out.”

Zuckerberg also discussed the company’s plans involving AI-powered personal assistants, an effort he briefly detailed in an April earnings call after the debut of Meta’s Muse Spark AI model.

“People will be more important in the future, not less, and as people inevitably want to get more out of these agents, there will be an opportunity to charge for premium or high compute versions,” Zuckerberg said.

Although Meta offers businesses some AI-related features on WhatsApp, those services are currently free. Zuckerberg said the company is working at “establishing a longer-term monetization model as well.”

Separately on Wednesday, Meta revealed that it will begin testing monthly subscription services for its Meta AI app and website, marking the first time the company will charge users for AI features. The Meta AI subscription plans will cost either $7.99 or $19.99 a month, depending on certain features, and will initially be available in Singapore, Guatemala and Bolivia.

Zuckerberg said at last year’s shareholder meeting that as Meta AI improves, the company could offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”

WATCH: Meta reshapes workforce as AI disrupts entry level hiring.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is back at the negotiating table with the U.S. Department of Defense after the breakdown of talks on Friday over the use of the company’s AI tools by the military, according to The Financial Times. 

Amodei is in talks with Emil Michael, under-secretary of defense for research and engineering, in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement on the terms governing the Pentagon’s access to Anthropic’s Claude models, the Times reported, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.

Discussions fell apart Friday, with President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s tools, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying he would designate the company a supply-chain risk to national security.

Last week, Michael had attacked Amodei, calling him a “liar” with a “God complex,” in an X post.

Agreeing to a new contract would enable the U.S. military to continue using Anthropic’s technology, which has reportedly been utilized in Washington’s war with Iran. 

Claude became the first major model deployed in the government’s classified networks through a $200 million contract awarded by the DoD to Anthropic, but the company later sought guarantees that its tools would not be used in domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Pentagon had demanded that the military be allowed to employ the technology for any lawful use.

In a Friday memo seen by FT, Amodei reportedly told staff that near the end of negotiations with the Defense Department, it had offered to accept Anthropic’s terms if they deleted a “specific phrase about ‘analysis of bulk acquired data'” — a line he said, “exactly matched this scenario we were most worried about.” 

Amodei also wrote in his note that messaging from the Pentagon and OpenAI, which struck a new deal with the Defense Department on Friday, was “just straight up lies about these issues or tries to confuse them.” 

The timing of OpenAI’s deal with the Pentagon, announced within hours of the White House decrying Anthropic, had caused a public backlash, with Claude seeing a surge of app downloads while ChatGPT reportedly saw app uninstallations surge.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later said that his company “shouldn’t have rushed” its deal and outlined revisions to its own safeguards with how the Defense Department can use its technology. 

In a post on X, Altman further addressed the controversy, saying: “In my conversations over the weekend, I reiterated that Anthropic should not be designated as a [supply chain risk], and that we hope the [Department of Defense] offers them the same terms we’ve agreed to.”

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI staff and researchers, who left the firm after disagreements over its direction, with the company marketing itself as a “safety-first” alternative.

Government officials have for months criticized Anthropic for allegedly being overly concerned with AI safety.

A tech industry group, whose members include Nvidia, Google and Anthropic, had sent a letter to Hegseth on Wednesday expressing concern over his designating a U.S. company as a supply-chain risk.

The Defense Department and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on their reported negotiations.

The market volatility may be leading retail investors astray.

According to Kathmere Capital Management’s Nick Ryder, they shouldn’t use the current backdrop as an excuse to dive into defensive trades — including dividend-paying stocks and bonds.

“Oftentimes, we just see too often people taking an income-focused approach, and it leaves a lot on the table,” the firm’s chief investment officer told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “We generally just advise for all of our clients to take a total return-oriented approach … that’s going to apply across stocks, bonds and everything in between within a portfolio.”

Ryder, whose firm has $3.5 billion in assets under management, warns against so-called “yield-chasing.”

“Within fixed income, it could be yield-chasing in terms of moving further out interest rate risk, taking greater amounts of duration and portfolio, [and] moving from investment grade to high-yield bonds —which have dramatically different risk and return expectations,” he added.

Ryder contends income shouldn’t be the foundation of long-term portfolios. He indicates investors are better served starting with goals and risk tolerance, then adding income, because pullbacks are part of long-term investing. An income-first approach, he cautions, can quietly push portfolios into unintended bets.

He’s also optimistic about the macro backdrop.

“Overall, the economy has been pretty darn resilient,” added Ryder. “You’ve seen corporate profitability be very resilient.”

That total-return approach is also why Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is urging investors not to let the distribution number drive the decisions. 

“We think being smart about yield means balancing attractive yield with upside or long-term capital appreciation … not just going for a maximum possible yield,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview. “We think that’s a yield trap.”

JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum hinted Tuesday the industry could fight President Donald Trump’s demand for credit card price controls, saying “everything’s on the table.”

“If you wind up with weakly supported directives to radically change our business that aren’t justified, you have to assume that everything’s on the table,” Barnum said on a call with reporters following JPMorgan’s fourth-quarter earnings report. “We owe that to shareholders.”

Barnum was responding to a question about whether banks would choose to litigate to block Trump’s demand, made late Friday, that card companies cap interest rates at 10% for a year. Last year, the industry successfully fought efforts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to cap card late fees.

Banks and industry insiders say that an interest rate limit would result in fewer credit card accounts for Americans and a dip in spending for the U.S. economy, as companies would simply pull accounts rather than offer them at an unprofitable level.

The average credit card rate nationally is 19.7% as of this month, according to a weekly survey from Bankrate.com, while rates for subprime borrowers and store-specific cards are typically higher.

“Our belief is that actions like this will have the exact opposite consequence to what the administration wants for consumers,” Barnum said. “Instead of lowering the price of credit, we’ll simply reduce the supply of credit, and that will be bad for everyone: consumers, the wider economy, and yes, at the margin, for us.”

The CFO declined to directly answer a question on whether JPMorgan would comply with Trump’s demand, which has a proposed Jan. 20 start date. Banks that don’t follow the directive are “in violation of the law,” Trump told reporters Sunday.

Still, it’s unclear how Trump’s mandate would be enforced. There is no U.S. law capping card rates, though a bill was introduced last year from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that would limit card APRs at 10% for five years. That bill is stalled in Congress.

Other voices in the corporate and political realms began addressing the possible impact of Trump’s rate cap on Tuesday.

Beyond banks, airlines and retailers rely on revenue from card partnerships to bolster profit. For instance, Delta Air Lines said Tuesday that its American Express partnership produced $8.2 billion in revenue last year.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on an earnings call that the cap would “upend the whole credit card industry … I don’t see any way we could even begin to contemplate how that would be implemented.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a note of caution when asked about the issue at a news conference.

“We have a lot of work to go [on] consensus around it, but you got to be very careful as we go forward in that in our zeal to bring down costs — you don’t want to have negative secondary effects,” Johnson said.

— CNBC’s Emily Wilkins and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.