Meta can’t afford its $600B love letter to Trump • The Register
Meta on Friday floated plans to invest $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs by 2028 as part of a massive datacenter expansion.
The lofty goal eclipses OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate initiative. But like its rival, Meta can’t actually afford the infrastructure project CEO Mark Zuckerberg has promised President Donald Trump.
For Meta to realize the $600 billion goal by the end of 2028, it would need to increase its capital expenditures nearly threefold from the $70-72 billion it expects to spend in 2025.
Zuckercorp has already warned of “notably larger” spending in 2026, but the company earned “only” $62 billion in profit last year, up from $39 billion in 2023. So even if it used all of its near-liquid assets — as of Q3, Meta had about $44.5 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and other marketable securities — and plowed every dollar of profit into bit barns for the next few years, Meta would be hard pressed to pull this off.
That is, unless Meta takes on massive debt.
All signs point to Meta doing just that. Last month, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram revealed plans to sell $30 billion in bonds, some of which won’t mature for 40 years, to finance its expansion. Meanwhile, in late October, Meta entered into a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital to finance its Hyperion datacenter in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which is expected to top 5 gigawatts of capacity when it’s completed in 2030.
Under that agreement, Blue Owl would develop and own the datacenter campus while Meta would provide construction and property management. Once complete, Meta will lease the campus back from the joint venture on a recurring basis.
Funds represented by Blue Owl would hold an 80 percent interest in the joint venture, while Meta will retain a 20 percent stake in the development.
The deal essentially amounts to Zuckerberg convincing his finance buddies to take out loans on his behalf to pay for a datacenter that he’s only committed to renting for the next four years. Yes, he will likely have to pay a penalty tied to the site’s residual value for early termination or non-renewal during the first 16 years of operation, but if the bubble bursts, Meta may still come out ahead.
If Meta has any hope of realizing its $600 billion US infrastructure expansion, Zuck better hope his financiers have deep pockets and a lot of patience. ®
