issued Saturday, July 25, 2026 · 11:23 am
[NEW YORK] BlackRock sees weaker-than-usual demand for sales of corporate bonds related to its Texas Metaplatforms data center project as investors grapple with concerns about excessive artificial intelligence infrastructure spending.
Final demand reached $20 billion by late afternoon on Friday (July 24), about 1.6 times the amount of bonds offered, the people said. Borrowers typically aim to generate demand several times the size of the bond issue to obtain optimal pricing.
The $12.3 billion bond is expected to be priced on Monday, the people said.
A huge sell-off of huge bonds by technology companies has stretched investors’ ability to absorb supply, reducing their appetite for new AI-related bonds. Amazon.com Inc.’s $25 billion offering earlier this month closed with orders 1.6 times that amount, well below this year’s investment-grade average of four deals.
Market conditions worsened this week when Alphabet increased its 2026 capital spending forecast, reigniting concerns about whether its massive AI investments will pay off. Rising oil prices due to the escalating war with Iran also lowered risk appetite.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are managing bond sales. JPMorgan declined to comment on the final request, while Morgan Stanley, BlackRock and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
Sopaipira Investor, a holding company affiliated with BlackRock, is selling the bonds due in 2048.
Pricing was guided by a premium of about 2.875 percentage points over the 10-year Treasury yield, consistent with previous pricing discussions, the people said, asking not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Companies typically reduce their borrowing costs through the syndication process.
These levels are about 0.4 percentage points wider than the levels at which Benigne notes due in 2049 currently trade. The Beignet securities, whose spreads widened by more than half a percentage point this month, were sold last year to raise money for a metadata center in Louisiana.
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Proceeds will fund a data center campus in El Paso, Texas, which is expected to provide up to 1 gigawatt of computing power for artificial intelligence workloads. BlackRock subsidiaries Global Infrastructure Management and HPS Investment Partners will own 80 percent of the project, with Meta owning the remaining 20 percent.
Meta’s most recent U.S. bond offering in April, a $25 billion deal, saw weak demand and higher spreads than six months earlier, when it raised $30 billion. The spread on one of the bonds sold in April (with a maturity date of 2046) has widened by 0.3 percentage points since the price was set.
A sopaipilla deal, named after a fried pastry popular in the southwestern United States, is similar to a project finance loan. Such debt is issued by a special purpose vehicle, the principal is gradually repaid over time, and the debt is backed by Meta’s lease agreement.
This structure allows Meta to raise capital off-balance sheet, alleviating concerns about over-borrowing, while also making investors more willing to accept risk as the social media giant backs its debt through data center leases.
Other technology companies are also using this format to fund their AI infrastructure.
Last month, Hut 8 raised $4.25 billion to fund a Texas data center it leased to Nvidia. It also sold $3.25 billion in bonds in April for a project that relied on funding from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, just weeks after Blackstone-backed QTS issued $4.6 billion in bonds to fund a project in partnership with Microsoft. bloomberg
