Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is in advanced talks with major private capital firms to raise as much as $29 billion to finance its aggressive expansion into artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
According to a Financial Times report citing sources familiar with the discussions, Meta is engaging leading private credit investors such as Apollo Global Management, KKR, Brookfield, Carlyle, and Pimco.
The tech giant aims to secure $3 billion in equity funding, followed by $26 billion in debt, to support the construction of next-generation data centres in the United States.
Meta is reportedly working with investment bank Morgan Stanley to structure the fundraising and is exploring ways to make the debt component more liquid and tradeable, a key concern among potential investors due to the unprecedented scale of the transaction.
If completed, the deal would mark one of the largest private capital raises of its kind.
Betting big on AI
The move underscores Meta’s all-in bet on AI, as it races to catch up with rivals like OpenAI and Google in the fast-evolving AI arms race.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ramped up capital expenditure and strategic hiring in a bid to position Meta as a global AI leader.
In May, the company raised its 2025 capital expenditure guidance to between $64 billion and $72 billion, citing increased investment in data centres and infrastructure hardware to support AI model training and deployment.
- Despite the hype surrounding Meta’s Llama large language model, its Llama 4 iteration has underperformed expectations, and its anticipated “Behemoth” model has faced delays.
- In a bid to regain momentum, Meta recently invested $15 billion in AI data labeling startup ScaleAI and brought on board its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead a newly formed superintelligence team focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
- Zuckerberg is also aggressively recruiting AI talent. Reports suggest he has offered as much as $100 million in sign-on bonuses to lure top engineers, including several high-profile hires from OpenAI.
To support the enormous power demands of AI infrastructure, Meta has secured long-term energy deals, including a landmark agreement to purchase the output of a nuclear power plant in Illinois for 20 years, its first such deal.
The company has also signed four additional agreements with clean energy developer Invenergy.
Private capital powers AI race
Meta’s financing strategy reflects a broader trend in the tech industry, where blue-chip companies are partnering with private investment firms to avoid over-leveraging their balance sheets while funding large-scale capital projects.
Private capital firms have also stepped in to back similar projects by other AI frontrunners. Notably, Blue Owl Capital recently agreed to finance a $15 billion data centre joint venture for OpenAI in Texas.
OpenAI is also collaborating with SoftBank and Oracle on a proposed $500 billion AI infrastructure project.
