Meta signs $27B deal for its largest data center project
What's the story
Meta has secured a massive $27 billion financing deal with Blue Owl Capital to build its largest data center ever. The facility, dubbed Hyperion, will be located in Richland Parish, Louisiana. It is part of the tech giant's efforts to bolster the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. Under the agreement, Meta will hold around 20% equity in the project while most of it will be owned by funds managed by alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital.
Project details
Hyperion to train large language models
Hyperion is expected to provide over 2 gigawatts of compute capacity for training large language models, the tech behind ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz, co-CEOs of Blue Owl, called Hyperion "an ambitious project that reflects the scale and speed required to power the next generation of AI infrastructure." This facility will be a major contributor to Meta's AI ambitions.
Strategic move
Meta's largest private capital deal to date
The deal with Blue Owl Capital is Meta's largest private capital deal to date. The company has signed leases for the facility for an initial term of four years with an option to extend. Once operational, Hyperion is expected to create over 500 jobs in the region.
Industry trend
Tech giants are going all in on AI infrastructure
Meta isn't alone in its quest for AI infrastructure. Other tech behemoths like Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and CoreWeave are also expected to spend a whopping $400 billion on such projects this year. OpenAI, the company at the center of the AI revolution, recently made deals worth over $1 trillion for around 26 gigawatts of computing capacity—enough to power some 20 million US homes.