Meta said July 28 that it will develop a data center campus in El Paso, Texas, with funds managed by BlackRock, a structure that lets the social media giant build for the AI era without carrying all of the debt. The project represents more than $10 billion of Meta investment, and the ownership split is the notable part: the BlackRock-managed fund will hold 80% of the project while Meta keeps 20%.
The two sides will share roughly $14 billion in construction costs for the campus, including its long-life power, cooling and connectivity infrastructure, in proportion to their stakes. At financial closing, Meta will contribute about $2.3 billion in land and assets under construction, while BlackRock’s side will contribute roughly $4.9 billion in cash. Meta will receive a one-time distribution of about $1 billion as part of the ownership arrangement, and BlackRock’s investment will be partly funded by $12.5 billion in debt financing.
The deal is the latest example of a shift in how the largest technology companies pay for the infrastructure that artificial intelligence requires. Meta has historically built and owned its data centers outright. The El Paso campus marks a move toward what executives call an asset-light model: BlackRock brings the capital, the debt stays off Meta’s books, and Meta retains the operational control and the 20% equity.
The structure reflects both the scale of AI spending and the cost of it. Meta has told investors it expects its capital expenditures to reach the hundreds of billions over the next several years, driven by demand for the computing power that trains and runs large models. Financing all of that on its own balance sheet would strain even a company with Meta’s cash flow. Partnering with an asset manager converts a multi-billion-dollar build into a recurring fee arrangement, preserving cash for other priorities.
The announcement lands days before Meta reports its second-quarter results, scheduled for later this week. Analysts expect revenue above $60 billion for the quarter, and the focus of the call is likely to be the company’s capital spending plan: investors want to know when the enormous AI outlays begin producing returns that show up in reported earnings. The El Paso structure gives Meta executives a ready answer to one part of that question, evidence that the company is finding ways to build at scale without loading up its own debt.
The deal also reflects the growing role of financial institutions in the AI buildout. BlackRock has been raising dedicated funds for infrastructure, and its participation in the El Paso campus is among the largest commitments an asset manager has made to a single AI data center project. BlackRock has said it sees AI infrastructure as a long-duration asset class, akin to toll roads and power grids, with stable cash flows backed by long-term leases from technology tenants. Meta, in this case, is both developer and anchor tenant.
People familiar with the transaction said the structure was designed in part to address investor concerns about how much debt the largest tech companies are taking on. By moving the debt financing to the fund level, Meta keeps its debt ratios within the ranges investors have come to expect. The $12.5 billion in debt will sit against the project’s cash flows rather than Meta’s corporate balance sheet, a distinction that credit analysts say matters for bondholders.
Texas has become a favored location for data center development, with abundant land, power projects under construction and a regulatory environment that technology companies say is friendlier than California’s or New York’s. El Paso, on the border with Mexico, brings the additional advantage of access to cross-border power infrastructure, according to officials involved in the project. Local officials have welcomed the development, which they expect to bring construction jobs and, eventually, a smaller number of high-skilled operations roles.
The campus will house computing capacity for Meta’s AI workloads, including model training and inference, according to people familiar with the plans. Construction is expected to proceed in phases, with the first buildings coming online next year. Meta said it will operate the facility through its data center operations arm, the same team that runs its other campuses.
The El Paso deal is unlikely to be Meta’s last of its kind. Executives have said the company is evaluating similar structures for other sites, and BlackRock has signaled it intends to expand its infrastructure portfolio. As the AI buildout continues, the pattern is becoming clear: the technology companies supply the demand, the asset managers supply the capital, and the lenders supply the rest. The question for investors is how much of the risk stays where it was put.
The El Paso announcement also carries political weight. Texas has courted data center investment with tax incentives and streamlined permitting, and the project is expected to create thousands of construction jobs in a border region that has struggled economically. Lawmakers in Washington have meanwhile begun examining whether the rapid growth of AI infrastructure concentrates too much power in the hands of a few asset managers.
