3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jun 29, 2026 01:20 PM IST
Meta’s internal AI projects have been hit with disruptions and delays, and Google could be part of the reason why.
When Meta turned to the search giant for more computing capacity in March this year, Google denied the request and chose to impose limits on the social media company’s use of its Gemini AI models, according to a Financial Times report published on Sunday, June 28. Google reportedly told Meta that it could not meet the full Gemini capacity the company had sought to purchase.
Several other Google customers that rely on the tech giant for compute capacity have also been affected. But Meta is said to have borne the brunt amid surging demand for Google’s models.
The development comes as big tech companies continue pouring billions of dollars into chips, data centres, and other AI infrastructure components. It underscores how many are still struggling to secure enough computing power to support the growing demand for AI services.
In the last earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had said that computing power constraints prevented even higher growth of Google Cloud and contributed to the backlog nearly doubling quarter on quarter. Google Cloud revenue grew to $20 billion in the first quarter ended March.
Besides Meta, Apple has also partnered with Google to use Gemini models to power the next-generation, more personalised Siri AI voice assistant. While the iPhone-maker relies on Google’s AI models, they are not the same Google Gemini models available to the public, as many people in the tech industry first thought when the two companies announced a partnership in January 2026.
End of tokenmaxxing?
Earlier this year, several big tech companies urged employees to use AI tools as extensively as possible, in a trend that came to be referred to as ‘tokenmaxxing’. Meta even said that it would evaluate employees’ performance based on their usage of AI tools.
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However, due to the recent restrictions, Meta has now encouraged staff to be more efficient with AI tokens, the units that measure AI usage, according to the report.
Meta is not alone. The Experiences + Devices unit within Microsoft, which includes engineers responsible for Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Surface, was instructed to wind down their usage of Anthropic’s Claude Code by the end of June, according to a report by The Verge. While part of the reason is to steer developers toward Microsoft’s own Copilot CLI, the decision is also reportedly tied to financial considerations.