Meta forms $14B BlackRock JV for 1-gigawatt El Paso data center

Meta's $14 billion joint venture with BlackRock will fund a 1-gigawatt AI data center in El Paso, targeted to come online in 2028, with Meta retaining a 20% ownership stake. The off-balance-sheet JV structure — a recurring pattern this week (see NVIDIA's OpenAI backstop) — lets Meta secure massive compute capacity while sharing capital risk with an institutional partner, a sign that even the best-capitalized labs are structuring infrastructure spend to preserve financial flexibility.

One gigawatt places El Paso among the largest AI facilities under development, and the 2028 timeline underscores how far ahead labs are now planning power and compute. It fits Meta's aggressive data-hunger trajectory: Epoch AI data shows Meta's Llama training datasets ballooned from 1.4 trillion data points in 2023 to 30 trillion by 2025.

Separately, Meta signed the EU AI Act Code of Conduct on AI-generated content transparency — notable given Meta's historically combative stance on EU regulation, and a contrast to reports elsewhere of a dropped Meta lawsuit. The compliance signal suggests Meta is choosing accommodation in Europe as it scales.

The competitive read: the week's megadeals — Meta/BlackRock $14B, NVIDIA/OpenAI $250B, Samsung/Broadcom $200B, Microsoft/Mistral billions — collectively signal that the AI race is now a capital-and-energy race. Skeptics see bubble dynamics in the interlocking commitments and long 2028 timelines; optimists see genuine demand pull. For Meta specifically, the question is whether 1GW of new capacity feeds a payoff in its superintelligence and Muse model ambitions or simply raises the stakes of an expensive bet.