Building the hardware to power artificial intelligence takes a lot of money.
BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, is now working to raise more than $12 billion in bonds to support a Meta data center facility in El Paso, Texas. That is a huge sum, though it is slightly below the $13 billion estimate people with knowledge of the deal floated back in May for the total financing.
The structure here matters. BlackRock owns 80% of the project through two of its units - Global Infrastructure Management (GIP) and HPS Investment Partners. Meta owns the other 20%. This joint-venture setup lets Meta keep the debt off its own books, similar to a structure Meta has used before.
Meta has previously stated that the site is expected to become operational in 2028, providing over 300 on-site jobs upon completion.
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This is not BlackRock's first rodeo with Meta data center financing. A separate project in Louisiana - the expanded Hyperion data center - is even bigger in scope.
That facility is expected to have a computing capacity of 5 gigawatts, and its development costs are estimated at $50 billion.
For that earlier venture, Meta partnered with Blue Owl Capital, which owned 80% of the project the same way BlackRock does now. The debt backing that deal came to $27 billion, and asset manager PIMCO backed some of it. So the pattern is clear: tech giants team up with big-money partners to share the cost of building the infrastructure AI needs.
All of this is part of a much larger wave. According to a June note from JPMorgan strategists, large technology firms are projected to invest roughly $5.5 trillion in AI by the year 2030. A huge chunk of that will come from borrowing, not just cash on hand.
The bond sale is expected to price early next week, so the details will get clearer fast. But the direction is already set: AI infrastructure is getting built at a scale that would have sounded unbelievable just a few years ago.
For investors, the takeaway is not about one data center or one bond deal. It is about what happens when the biggest companies on earth decide they need to spend trillions on computing power. That money will show up in earnings reports, supply chains, and stock prices for years to come.
Keep an eye on who is supplying the parts, the power, and the financing. That is where the opportunity sits.
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