REPORT: Meta In Talks With Investor For $35B Data Center Raise
Meta is reportedly in discussions with Apollo Global Management to lead a $35B investment in developing U.S. data centers.
The talks are preliminary, Bloomberg reported, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, one of whom said investment firm KKR would also be involved.
It comes as Meta has been ramping up its data center network. The company broke ground on six data centers last year and plans to bring an entire gigawatt online this year.
Last month, the tech behemoth exceeded experts’ expectations when it said it plans to deploy between $60B and $65B in capital expenditures this year — a bump fueled by investment in artificial intelligence and data center development.
On its earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new plans for a more than 2 GW data center, large enough to cover a “significant part of Manhattan.”
Meta’s three big competitors — Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft — are also upping their data center spending amid the AI arms race.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced plans to spend $100B on AI this year, with data centers one of its main beneficiaries.
Google parent company Alphabet said on its February earnings call that its $75B projected capex this year will largely be put toward “technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft plans to spend $80B on AI-enabled data center construction this year, it announced last month.
Data center demand is expected to balloon over the next five years as AI permeates an increasing number of sectors.
A McKinsey report in October found that global demand for data center capacity could increase between 19% and 22% annually from 2023 to 2030, eventually demanding between 171 GW and 219 GW, up from the 60 GW needed today.
