BlackRock will take an 80% ownership stake in Meta's $14 billion artificial intelligence data center campus in El Paso, Texas.
BlackRock and Meta announced a partnership to develop and operate a 1,000-acre data center campus in El Paso, Texas. Under the agreement, BlackRock-managed funds will hold an80% ownership stake in the project, while Meta will contribute land and construction assets worth $2.3 billion. BlackRock will provide a cash contribution of $10.9 billion, including a $1 billion distribution to Meta to align ownership. This deal signals a new financing model for the AI infrastructure boom. As capital expenditure forecasts for tech giants like Meta and Alphabet grow, financial firms are increasingly backing the massive costs of AI infrastructure. Meta's shares dropped 10% recently following a higher 2026 capital expenditure forecast, which Chief Financial Officer Susan Li attributed to higher memory-chip pricing and data center costs. Other tech companies, such as OpenAI and SoftBank, are also forming partnerships with financial firms to finance and develop AI data centers across the United States.