JPM | Industrial Strength Morning Messages: Meta, Previews, VW

Research evidence excerpt

JPM | Industrial Strength Morning Messages: Meta, Previews, VW

Specialist Sales J P M O R G A N

02 July 2026

Sam Edmunds

+44 207 742 8733

sam.edmunds@jpmorgan.com

Today:

In Focus Today

• Good Morning. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Meta is planning to establish a cloud computing business. As I understand

it, the business would use any excess compute that Meta has built out to host other companies AI operations. This could be a

nothing done or it could be one of the most consequential news stories we’ve seen this year. Data Center build-out has

been the principal growth driver for industrial companies - and, indeed, for much of the global economy. We’ve commented

many times about the frenzied nature of the build out program as US hyperscalers compete with one another for AI

dominance. If Meta is now ‘long’ compute then it would be the first sign of loosening we have seen. Commentary yesterday

from colleagues across the AI spectrum highlighted that this move might well underwrite Meta’s capex plans despite the

relative underperformance of its models vs others. Whilst this is true, we are in a situation where there is a significant amount

of speculative activity from co-locate and neo-cloud businesses and if Meta has excess capacity this could ripple through the

market. Equally, the underperformance of Meta’s models could simply mean that other AI companies take market share and

that the overall demand for compute is the same. As one client put it yesterday, however, given the current level of risk

taking in the market this should at least cause some pause for thought. It was not surprising, therefore, to see our DC

companies under some pressure yesterday afternoon - indeed, their resilience was generally impressive. We’re heading into