Meta partners with Blue Owl Capital on $27 billion AI data center project

Meta said Tuesday that it formed a joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth $27 billion to fund and develop the social media company’s massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana.

As part of the deal, the asset management firm will own 80% of the joint venture, while Meta will retain a 20% stake and oversee the construction and property management services of the data center, which is being built in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Blue Owl contributed about $7 billion in cash as part of the joint venture, while Meta received a one-time payout of $3 billion.

The partnership provides the “the speed and flexibility” Meta needs to build the data center and support its “long-term AI ambitions,” the social media company said in a statement.

Meta in December announced that it chose Louisiana to host what would be its largest data center. Construction of that facility, which is being built on a site the size of roughly 1,700 football fields, is expected to finish by 2030.

Local utility Entergy told CNBC in June that the new data center could consume about twice as much electricity as the city of New Orleans on a peak day.

Meta has been spending heavily on artificial intelligence amid a broader race with other tech giants like Alphabet and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which are also developing gigantic data centers to power future AI models.

OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank in January formed the Stargate joint venture that will see the companies invest $500 billion to develop data centers over the coming years. The first Stargate data center site came online in September 180 miles west of Dallas in Abilene, Texas.

Last week, Google said that it would invest $15 billion on a data center project in southern India that will be the search giant’s largest AI hub in the world outside of the U.S.

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