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Tech giant Meta has tapped a pair of investment firms to lead its massive data center development effort in Louisiana.
Pacific Investment Management Co. and Blue Owl Capital will partner on the $29B financing deal for the social media company's data center expansion in the state, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
As part of the agreement, Pimco will lead the $26B debt portion of the deal, and Blue Owl will provide $3B in equity.
The tech giant worked with Morgan Stanley to raise the funds, and the process for picking financing partners was competitive as private credit firms try to get a slice of the artificial intelligence pie. Apollo Global Management and KKR were also in talks to lead the financing, Bloomberg reported.
The company selected a 2,250-acre site in Northeast Louisiana in December to build a 4M SF data center. The project is estimated to create more than 500 new jobs and would cost $10B to develop.
Meta is one of the largest global data center users and operates 28 campuses, along with the properties it leases.
The company plans to spend up to $72B on artificial intelligence data centers this year, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it could spend as much as $100B next year, part of a broader acceleration from Big Tech on AI infrastructure spending.
Meta is also looking to sell $2B in data center land and construction projects to fund its AI infrastructure expansion. The company wants to sell the land to a third party by next year and partner on data center development.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are also pouring hundreds of billions into AI data centers, and more investment giants are looking to get in on the gold rush.
Microsoft partnered with BlackRock in March to raise $30B to fund its data center development goals. On Wednesday, Apollo announced it agreed to buy a majority stake in Stream Data Centers.
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