BlackRock is set to take an 80% ownership stake in one of the biggest artificial intelligence data center campuses in the country—Meta's $14 billion, one gigawatt project in El Paso—in one of the clearest signs yet that Wall Street is becoming a major financier of the AI race and signaling a new model for financing the accompanying infrastructure boom.
A view of Meta's data center in Ireland.
Meta and BlackRock on Tuesday announced they were partnering to develop and operate the new, 1,000-acre data center campus in Texas that has been under construction for more than six months and will become one of the country’s largest AI infrastructure projects.
The agreement says Meta will contribute land and in-progress construction assets worth about $2.3 billion and BlackRock will make a cash contribution of about $4.9 billion.
Meta will also receive a $1 billion distribution to align ownership and, in the end, will own only about 20% of the project while BlackRock-managed funds take an 80% ownership stake.
