BlackRock and Meta announced on Tuesday a deal to build a 1-gigawatt data center in El Paso. Latham & Watkins advised Meta on the transaction, and BlackRock used Kirkland & Ellis as outside legal counsel.
The Kirkland team includes Allan Kirk (Houston), Evan Chavez (Houston), Adam Griffin (New York), John Papaspanos (New York), Julian Seiguer (Houston), Ieuan List (Austin), Brooke Curry (Houston), David Stanek (Chicago), Steve Butler (Austin/Houston), Jonathan Macke (Dallas) and Griffin Peeples (Houston).
The social media company said in a news release Tuesday that BlackRock will pay about $4.9 billion in cash for 80 percent of the venture, while Meta will contribute land and assets valued at about $2.3 billion and own the remaining 20 percent. Meta said its total investment in the El Paso facility will be more than $10 billion.
The companies project total development costs of about $14 billion for “the buildings and long-lived power, cooling, and connectivity infrastructure at the campus.”
“Building the infrastructure for superintelligence is key to making sure the benefits of this technology are distributed to everyone,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. “Our partnership with Larry and the team at BlackRock allows us to move faster and at greater scale — pairing our deep expertise in designing and operating world-class data centers with one of the world’s leading infrastructure investors.”
“We’re excited to partner with Mark and the Meta leadership team on the El Paso data center campus, which will create thousands of skilled jobs and help drive economic growth in the local community,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in the release.
Meta said it will receive about $1 billion “to align ownership stakes in accordance with the 80/20 ownership split.” BlackRock plans to fund some of its investment with proceeds from a $12.5 billion debt financing.
Meta used Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan as financial advisors, and Milbank provided legal counsel to the advisors. Eversheds Sutherland advised Meta on leasing matters.