BlackRock, Meta Platforms in $14 Billion Texas Data Center Venture -- Update

By Colin Kellaher

BlackRock and Meta Platforms are forming a venture to develop and own a $14 billion data-center campus in El Paso, Texas.

BlackRock, the world's largest investment firm, will own 80% of the venture, the companies said Tuesday, while Facebook parent Meta will own the remaining 20% and lease the entire campus, which will have 1 gigawatt of compute capacity.

The companies said they have committed to fund their respective pro-rata share of the roughly $14 billion in total development costs for the buildings and long-lived power, cooling and connectivity infrastructure at the campus, which is currently under construction.

Meta will contribute the venture land and construction-in-progress assets valued at around $2.3 billion at closing, while BlackRock will make a $4.9 billion cash contribution, the companies said, with Meta receiving a $1 billion distribution to align ownership stakes in accordance with the 80-20 split.

The companies said the expect to complete the transaction in the coming days and to begin bringing the compute capacity online in 2028.

BlackRock plans to fund a portion of its investment with proceeds from its recent $12.5 billion debt financing.

Meta last year unveiled plans to invest $1.5 billion to build the El Paso data center and boosted its spending commitment to $10 billion in March. The Menlo Park, Calif., company said the site will create 300 operation jobs, along with more than 4,000 construction jobs at its peak.

Meta earlier this month scaled up the size of its massive data-center project in Louisiana to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity and said it would now cost more than $50 billion, up from an original estimate of $27 billion.

BlackRock was among the biggest investors in a $27 billion private-debt deal backing construction of the Louisiana data center.

Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 28, 2026 07:35 ET (11:35 GMT)