Meta Platforms and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, have announced a venture to develop and operate a data center campus in El Paso, Texas. The project is expected to cost around $14 billion in development.
Investment in AI Infrastructure
The partnership is part of the race to build out AI infrastructure, with tech giants turning to debt sales or seeking external capital from fund managers like BlackRock due to the unprecedented scale of investment. Meta said BlackRock-managed funds will take an 80% ownership stake in the venture, with Meta retaining the remaining 20%.
Meta has plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers by 2028, with an aim to fast-track work on personal superintelligence, which could help generate new cash flows from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools, and smart glasses. The social media giant is building several gigawatt-scale data centers across the U.S., including one in rural Louisiana, a project Meta expected to expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, with investment increasing to more than $50 billion.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
