Meta Platforms and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, announced Tuesday a joint venture to develop and run a major data center campus in El Paso, Texas. The project carries an estimated development cost of around $14 billion.
The announcement comes as tech companies race to expand their artificial intelligence infrastructure at a scale that has pushed them toward debt markets worth tens of billions of dollars or outside investors like BlackRock to help fund the massive undertaking.
Under the terms of the deal, funds managed by BlackRock will hold an 80% ownership stake in the venture, while Meta will retain the other 20%.
The Facebook parent company had previously announced plans for a data center project exceeding $10 billion in El Paso, located near the Texas-New Mexico border. That facility is one of 28 data centers Meta currently has either in operation or under construction throughout the United States.
Meta has outlined plans to invest $600 billion in data center construction by the year 2028, with the goal of accelerating development of personal superintelligence. The company believes that technology could generate new revenue streams through its Meta AI app, image-to-video advertising tools, and smart glasses products.
The social media company is also constructing multiple gigawatt-scale data centers across the country, including a facility in rural Louisiana that Meta expects to grow to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, with total investment there potentially exceeding $50 billion.
