October 21， 2025
In a significant move to accelerate its artificial intelligence infrastructure, Meta announced Tuesday that it has formed a joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital, a deal valued at a staggering $27 billion to fund and develop its massive Hyperion data center. The social media company is building this facility in rural Louisiana, marking a major step in its long-term AI strategy.
As part of the agreement, the asset management firm Blue Owl Capital will own 80% of the joint venture, while Meta will retain a 20% stake. Meta will oversee the construction and property management services for the data center, which is being developed in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Financially, Blue Owl contributed approximately $7 billion in cash to the venture, and Meta received a one-time payout of $3 billion. The company stated that this partnership provides the "the speed and flexibility" required to build the data center and support its expansive "long-term AI ambitions."
This project follows Meta's announcement in December that it had selected Louisiana as the host for what will be its largest data center. The scale of the undertaking is immense, with construction taking place on a site comparable to the size of roughly 1,700 football fields, and completion is targeted for 2030. The energy demands will be equally colossal; local utility Entergy told CNBC in June that the new data center could consume about twice as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans on a peak day.
This massive investment occurs amid a fiercely competitive landscape where Meta has been spending heavily on artificial intelligence. The company is in a broader race with other tech giants like Alphabet and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, all of whom are developing gigantic data centers to power their future AI models. This trend is exemplified by several other recent ventures, including the "Stargate" joint venture formed in January by OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank. That project involves a planned investment of $500 billion for data centers over the coming years, with its first site in Abilene, Texas, having come online in September. Just last week, Google also signaled the global scale of this competition, announcing it would invest $15 billion in a data center project in southern India that will be its largest AI hub in the world outside of the United States.
SOURCE CNBC
