{"slug": "blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship", "title": "BlackRock Takes 80% Stake In Meta Data Center Powering Censorship", "summary": "BlackRock is set to take an 80 percent stake in Meta's $14 billion, one-gigawatt AI data center project in El Paso, giving the world's largest asset manager direct control over infrastructure powering Meta's surveillance and censorship systems, Forbes reported. The deal follows a similar October arrangement where Blue Owl Capital took an 80 percent stake in Meta's Hyperion data center in Louisiana, a project now expected to cost over $50 billion and deliver 5 gigawatts of capacity. Meta boosted its projected 2026 capital expenditures to between $125 billion and $145 billion, and its shares dropped roughly 10 percent after the first-quarter report, wiping out $175 billion in market capitalization.", "body_md": "Meta Platforms reports second-quarter earnings tomorrow after a spending spree that has Wall Street's largest asset manager taking an 80 percent stake in its newest data center — putting BlackRock in direct control of infrastructure powering Zuckerberg's [surveillance](/tech/massie-bill-defunds-cities-deploying-flock-surveillance-cameras) and censorship empire.\n\nThe deal reveals the new model: Big Tech builds the digital panopticon that watches and silences you, Wall Street finances it, and you are the product. BlackRock is set to own 80 percent of Meta's $14 billion, one-gigawatt AI data center project in El Paso, Forbes reported. This follows an October deal where Blue Owl Capital took an 80 percent stake in Meta's Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana — a project now expected to cost more than $50 billion and deliver 5 gigawatts of capacity, up from the original 2-gigawatt estimate, according to Barchart. That Louisiana deal created a special-purpose holding company called Beignet Investor, which issued roughly $27 billion in project bonds, with Blue Owl funds investing about $3 billion for their 80 percent cut.\n\nMeta boosted its projected 2026 capital expenditures to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion. CFO Susan Li attributed the increase to higher memory-chip pricing and data center costs tied to AI infrastructure, Forbes reported. The market flinched: Meta shares dropped roughly 10 percent after the first-quarter report, wiping out $175 billion in market capitalization in a single day.\n\nThe stock is down 9.8 percent this year and 17 percent over the past 52 weeks. Yet the spending continues. Meta is also in preliminary negotiations with AI developer Anthropic to lease data center computing capacity in a deal valued at up to $10 billion over two years — turning idle hardware into revenue, Barchart reported.\n\nThe numbers tell the story of an empire that extracts from users and funnels to investors. Meta's Q1 delivered $7.31 earnings per share on revenue of $56.31 billion, with net income rising 17.59 percent to $26.77 billion. The Family of Apps business — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — generated $55 billion in Q1 revenue, up 33 percent year-over-year, driven by stronger engagement, improved monetization, and a 19 percent increase in ad impressions. More ads, more data, more surveillance. But operating cash flow fell 72.17 percent, and net cash flow went negative at -$8 billion — heavy investment pressures eating into the harvest.\n\nMeta expects Q2 revenue of $58 billion to $61 billion, with the midpoint implying more than 25 percent year-over-year growth. The average EPS estimate is $7.13, essentially flat versus $7.14 a year earlier.\n\nWall Street is all in on financing the AI infrastructure boom. More than 700 data centers are actively under construction across 38 states, according to Electric Choice, concentrated heavily in Virginia and Texas. OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi-backed MGX formed Stargate LLC with an initial $100 billion goal and eventual target of $500 billion. Microsoft, BlackRock, and that same Abu Dhabi-linked MGX created a fund structure for institutional investors to finance AI infrastructure. Google and Blackstone formed a joint venture. Broadcom partnered with Apollo and Blackstone. The same names keep appearing — and foreign state-backed money is in the mix.\n\n## Who Owns the Infrastructure That Owns You\n\nBarchart framed the story around whether Meta's AI ambitions justify the rising bill — a question for shareholders. Forbes framed it as Wall Street becoming a \"major financier\" of the AI race. Both miss the stake for ordinary people: these data centers are the physical backbone of systems that track what you say, decide what you're allowed to see, and sell access to your attention to the highest bidder. And now the world's largest asset manager — a firm with enormous influence over corporate governance across every sector — holds direct ownership stakes in the infrastructure itself.\n\nThe question isn't whether Meta's earnings justify its spending. It's who controls the digital infrastructure that increasingly mediates American life — and what they're building it to do.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship", "canonical_source": "https://dissenter.com/tech/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship", "published_at": "2026-07-28 16:54:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-28 16:54:37.218080+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["BlackRock", "Meta Platforms", "Blue Owl Capital", "Forbes", "Barchart", "Anthropic", "Susan Li", "El Paso"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/blackrock-takes-80-stake-in-meta-data-center-powering-censorship.jsonld"}}