BlackRock markets $12B in bonds to fund Meta’s data center project

BlackRock is raising $12.3 billion in bonds to build a data center campus in El Paso, Texas, that will deliver roughly 1 gigawatt of power capacity. To put that in perspective, 1 gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. Meta is the anchor tenant. The financing is being orchestrated through a holding company called Project Sopaipilla Holdings, in which BlackRock controls an 80% stake and Meta holds the remaining 20%. JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are running the bond sale. Why the world’s biggest asset manager is building data centers BlackRock recently completed a $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers, dramatically expanding its footprint in AI-related infrastructure. Its Global Infrastructure Partners unit and HPS Investment Partners are both involved in the Project Sopaipilla financing. The playbook here is not new for Meta. The social media giant previously used an identical 80/20 joint venture structure with Blue Owl Capital for a data center project in Louisiana. The model allows Meta to secure necessary compute capacity for AI workloads while keeping the bulk of the capital expenditure off its own balance sheet. The AI infrastructure arms race and what it means f...