Meta Secures $29 Billion in Funding for Rural Louisiana Data Center Expansion

Meta Platforms has secured $29 billion in funding for its data center expansion in rural Louisiana through a partnership with Pimco and Blue Owl Capital. The debt portion will be led by Pimco, while Blue Owl will provide $3 billion in equity financing. The funding will enable Meta to accelerate AI development and increase spending next year. Other tech giants, such as Microsoft, are also collaborating with investment firms to build AI data centers.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) has secured $29 billion in funding for its data center expansion project in rural Louisiana through a strategic partnership with Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) and Blue Owl Capital. The funding, announced on August 7, 2023, will be used to accelerate the company's artificial intelligence (AI) development and increase capital expenditures (capex) next year.

According to sources familiar with the matter, PIMCO will handle the majority of the financing, providing $26 billion in debt, likely through the issuance of investment-grade bonds backed by Meta's data center assets. Blue Owl Capital will contribute $3 billion in equity financing. The deal was facilitated by Morgan Stanley, with Apollo Global Management and KKR also being considered as lead financiers before the final negotiations [1][2][3].

Meta's investment in AI infrastructure is part of its broader strategy to become a leader in the AI space. The company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been actively pursuing AI development, including setting up a superintelligence team and acquiring AI startups. The data center expansion in Louisiana is a key component of this strategy, with the company planning to offload about $2 billion in data center assets to share costs with partners [2].

This funding announcement comes as Meta looks to scale its generative AI (GenAI) capacity, which is expected to drive higher spending across servers, networking, and data centers. The company has guided to a 2025 capex of $66 billion to $72 billion, an increase from the previous range of $64 billion to $72 billion [1].

Meta's AI-focused data center campus in Louisiana is part of a larger trend among big tech companies to invest heavily in high-performance computing for AI model training and inference. Microsoft, for instance, has announced plans to invest $80 billion in AI data centers, while Elon Musk's AI startup xAI raised $5 billion from the syndicated debt market [1].

The deal highlights Meta's growing reliance on private credit markets and strategic partners to finance its large-scale expansion of AI data centers. This trend is part of a broader shift in the tech industry, where companies are turning to private credit to fund their infrastructure needs [3].

References:
[1] https://stocktwits.com/news-articles/markets/equity/meta-reportedly-taps-pimco-blue-owl-captial-for-louisiana-data-center-financing/chrV6aCRd3v
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-taps-pimco-blue-owl-29-billion-data-center-expansion-project-source-says-2025-08-08/
[3] https://www.cryptopolitan.com/meta-taps-pimco-and-blue-owl/