Meta Secures $13B Financing for El Paso Data Center

Meta has arranged roughly $13 billion in financing, composed mostly of debt with a smaller equity component, to expand its El Paso data center campus to about one gigawatt of capacity. The package is being led by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. The size of the deal is about eight times Meta’s initial $1.5 billion commitment to the site announced in October 2025.

The financing would rank among the largest single-site data center financings on record, though it is smaller than Meta’s $27 billion Hyperion financing completed in October 2025, which used a joint-venture and bond structure. Under the El Paso plan, Meta would retain more direct ownership and rely mainly on straight debt rather than forming a large joint venture.

Lenders and analysts say projects at this scale no longer fit the standard commercial real estate loan model. Citigroup has estimated that the broader data center buildout could require as much as $3 trillion by 2030. Banks now deploy teams that evaluate technical and operational details such as power configurations, electrical and mechanical diagrams and land use permits in addition to property values.

Adam Lewis, managing director at Citizens and head of its digital infrastructure group, pointed to high minimum investment requirements and the technical demands of underwriting such projects: “If you can’t invest a billion dollars, we don’t even want to talk to you.” Scott Wilcoxen, JPMorgan’s global head of digital infrastructure investment banking, highlighted “time to power” as a major constraint for large data center builds.

S&P Global Ratings has warned that large, multi-billion-dollar financings tied to a single site, one operator and a single power configuration concentrate both insurable and credit exposure in ways infrastructure debt has not typically faced. Rating agencies and underwriters are treating that concentration as a material factor in assessments.

Meta’s recent capital spending reflects demand for data center capacity. The company spent $39 billion on infrastructure in 2024 and $72 billion in 2025. On its April 29, 2026 first-quarter earnings call, Meta raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $115 billion to $145 billion, up from a prior $115 billion to $135 billion range, and said most of that spending will go to AI data centers. CFO Susan Li stated that Meta will remain compute-constrained through much of 2026.

Major banks including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, SMBC and MUFG are exploring risk-transfer structures to move data center exposure off their balance sheets. If the El Paso financing closes near its current size, its structure and pricing are expected to inform how lenders, insurers and investors approach future mega-scale data center financings.