Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta Platforms Inc. (META) announced Tuesday a strategic joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, valued at $27 billion, to finance and construct its ambitious “Hyperion” data center project in rural Louisiana. The deal underscores Meta’s escalating commitment to artificial intelligence (AI) and the infrastructure required to support its growing AI initiatives.
Under the terms of the agreement, Blue Owl Capital will hold an 80% stake in the joint venture, with Meta retaining the remaining 20%. Meta will also oversee the construction and ongoing property management of the Hypersion data center, which is situated in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Blue Owl has contributed approximately $7 billion in cash to the joint venture, while Meta received a $3 billion upfront payment.
Meta emphasized that this partnership provides the necessary “speed and flexibility” to execute the data center build-out and underpin its “long-term AI ambitions” according to a company statement. This move allows Meta to offload a significant portion of the capital expenditure associated with such a large-scale infrastructure project while retaining operational influence.
The selection of Louisiana as the location for Meta’s largest data center was initially announced in December. The facility, sprawling across a site equivalent to roughly 1,700 football fields, is projected to be completed by 2030. The scale of the project highlights the increasing demand for computing power driven by AI development.
Speaking to CNBC in June, local utility Entergy indicated that the Hypersion data center could consume approximately twice the electricity of the entire city of New Orleans during peak demand. This significant energy requirement poses both challenges and opportunities for the local energy infrastructure, potentially spurring investment in new power generation capacity and renewable energy sources.
Meta’s hefty investments in AI mirror a broader race among tech giants, including Alphabet (GOOGL) and OpenAI, to develop cutting-edge AI models. This competition has fueled a surge in demand for large-scale data centers to house the powerful computing hardware needed to train and deploy these models.
The Hypersion deal comes amidst a flurry of activity in the AI infrastructure space. In January, OpenAI, Oracle (ORCL), and Softbank unveiled the “$500 billion Stargate” joint venture, dedicated to building a network of AI-focused data centers. The first Stargate data center is already operational in Abilene, Texas, approximately 180 miles west of Dallas, highlighting the rapid pace of development in this sector.
Google recently announced plans to inject $15 billion into a data center project in southern India, signifying its intention to create its largest AI hub outside of the United States and further intensifies the global race to AI dominance. This strategic investment underscores the importance of emerging markets in the AI landscape and the drive to tap into their growing talent pools and consumer base.
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