Meta, BlackRock Form $14 Billion El Paso Data Center Venture
Meta and BlackRock announced on July 28 a venture to own Meta's 1 GW El Paso data center campus, which is under construction and carries about $14 billion in development costs. BlackRock-managed funds will own 80% and Meta 20%; Meta will lease the entire campus, with capacity expected to begin coming online in 2028. The structure shifts most asset ownership to outside capital while preserving Meta's access to the site.
Meta and BlackRock announced on July 28 a venture to develop and own a 1 GW data center campus in El Paso, Texas. The campus is already under construction, and the companies put its development costs at approximately $14 billion.
Funds managed by BlackRock will own 80% of the venture, while Meta will retain 20%. Meta will manage construction and the property and will be the campus's initial sole occupant. At the time of the announcement, the transaction was expected to close within days and the venture expected to begin bringing capacity online in 2028.
How the financing is structured
Meta said it will contribute land and construction-in-progress assets valued at about $2.3 billion at financial close. BlackRock will contribute approximately $4.9 billion in cash, and Meta will receive a one-time distribution of about $1 billion to align the 80/20 ownership split. A portion of BlackRock's investment will be funded with proceeds from a $12.5 billion debt financing.
The arrangement does not separate Meta from the asset entirely. Meta retains a minority equity stake and will lease the entire campus from the venture. The initial lease term is four years, with four extension options that could take the relationship to 20 years. Meta also disclosed residual-value guarantees with an aggregate threshold of roughly $13 billion that declines over time.
That structure moves most ownership and financing outside Meta's balance sheet while preserving long-term access to the facility. It also leaves Meta with lease obligations, a minority stake and contingent exposure through the residual-value guarantees. This is best understood as a financing and ownership change for an existing project, not the launch of immediately available compute.
What 1 GW does and does not reveal
Meta says the campus will have 1 GW of compute capacity and support its AI models and core business. Bloomberg reported that the approximately $14 billion development estimate does not include the advanced chips needed to run AI workloads.
Neither the announcement nor the retrieved reporting specifies accelerator models, accelerator count, cluster topology, networking design or power-usage effectiveness. A 1 GW campus therefore signals the scale of planned infrastructure, but it does not translate directly into a disclosed amount of training or inference capacity.
For infrastructure and ML teams, the 2028 target is the practical constraint. Financing a campus, completing construction, energizing it and installing production hardware are separate milestones. Capacity planning should treat the announced 1 GW as a future facility target until Meta discloses deployment details and the venture begins bringing systems online.
Key Points
- 1BlackRock-managed funds will own 80% of the approximately $14 billion El Paso venture, while Meta retains 20%.
- 2Meta will lease the entire campus under a four-year initial term with extension options and disclosed declining residual-value guarantees.
- 3The venture expects capacity to begin coming online in 2028; the 1 GW figure does not disclose accelerator count or immediately usable AI compute.
Scoring Rationale
The approximately $14 billion, 1 GW venture is a material AI-infrastructure financing event because it combines outside majority ownership, large debt financing and a long-term Meta lease. Its operational impact remains prospective because capacity is not expected to begin coming online until 2028 and the technical configuration is undisclosed.
Sources
Primary source and supporting public references used for this report.
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