(Reuters) -Meta Platforms was close to sealing a nearly $30 billion financing package for its data center in rural Louisiana, which would be the largest private equity deal on record, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Large-scale cloud service providers, called hyperscalers, have been racing to build AI infrastructure, with most of the investment going into powering data centers.
Meta and alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital will split ownership of the Hyperion data center site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, with the social media giant retaining only 20%, Bloomberg said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Morgan Stanley arranged more than $27 billion of debt and about $2.5 billion of equity in a special purpose vehicle to finance construction, according to the report.
Meta is not borrowing the capital itself, but the financial entity is, under the SPV structure, Bloomberg News reported. Meta will be the developer, operator and tenant of the project, which will be completed in 2029.
The social media giant has tapped U.S. bond company PIMCO and Blue Owl Capital to lead a $29 billion financing for the data center expansion, Reuters reported in August.
The parties took the final step to price the bonds, in form 144A, with PIMCO as the anchor lender on October 16, according to Bloomberg News.
Some other investors are receiving some allocations of the debt, which matures in 2049, according to the report.
Meta, Blue Owl and Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Meta said Wednesday it would invest $1.5 billion in a data center in El Paso, Texas, breaking ground on its 29th facility globally while expanding infrastructure to support AI workloads.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City)