(Reuters) -Meta Platforms was set to seal an almost $30 billion finance package for its data center site in rural Louisiana, which would be the largest private capital deal on record, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Large-scale cloud service providers, called hyperscalers, have been racing to build AI infrastructure, with most of the investment going towards powering data centers.
Meta and alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital will split ownership of the Hyperion data center site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, with the social media giant retaining just 20%, Bloomberg said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Morgan Stanley arranged more than $27 billion debt and about $2.5 billion equity into a special purpose vehicle to finance the build-out, according to the report.
Meta is not borrowing the capital itself, but the financing entity is, under the SPV structure, Bloomberg News reported. Meta will be the developer, operator and tenant of the project, to be completed in 2029.
The social media giant has tapped U.S. bond company PIMCO and Blue Owl Capital to spearhead $29 billion in financing for the data center expansion, Reuters reported in August.
The parties took the final step to price the bonds — in the 144A format — with PIMCO as the anchor lender on October 16, according to Bloomberg News.
A few other investors are receiving some allocations of the debt, which matures in 2049, the report said.
Meta, Blue Owl and Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Meta said on Wednesday it would invest $1.5 billion in a data center in El Paso, Texas, breaking ground at its 29th such facility globally as it expands infrastructure to support AI workloads.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City)
