Meta Platforms and BlackRock announced a $14 billion [1] partnership on Tuesday to build a data-center campus in El Paso, Texas.
The venture represents a significant investment in the physical infrastructure required to sustain the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence. By partnering with a global investment firm, Meta can scale its compute capacity while diversifying the financial risk associated with massive hardware deployments.
The project focuses on developing a large-scale campus designed to support Meta's cloud and AI infrastructure [2]. This expansion comes as the demand for processing power increases to handle complex large language models, and integrated AI services across Meta's family of apps.
El Paso was selected as the site for the new facility [2]. The location provides the necessary land and utility requirements to support a campus of this magnitude, contributing to the regional tech ecosystem in the U.S. Southwest.
The $14 billion [1] investment highlights the ongoing arms race among tech giants to secure enough hardware and energy to maintain a competitive edge in AI development. While Meta manages the technical operations and deployment, BlackRock provides the capital and investment expertise necessary to execute the project.
This partnership was officially announced on July 28, 2026 [2].
“Meta Platforms and BlackRock announced a $14 billion partnership”
This collaboration signals a shift toward 'infrastructure-as-a-service' financing, where tech companies leverage private equity and asset managers to fund the immense capital expenditures required for AI. By offloading some of the financial burden to BlackRock, Meta can accelerate its deployment of AI hardware without solely relying on its own balance sheet, reflecting the extreme cost of the current AI scaling era.
