How Meta Is Financing the AI Build: Bonds and Joint Ventures

Building the computers behind artificial intelligence now costs more each year than most companies earn. A single campus can need new power plants, years of building work and huge numbers of chips. So even the richest businesses look for ways to share the bill with lenders and outside investors.

The news usually reports the partner's name and the size of the deal. It says much less about what the company promised in return, such as years of rent or a pledge to cover a loss if the buildings lose value. Those promises are what shareholders end up carrying, even when no new debt appears on the balance sheet.

The way to see the whole picture is to read the company's own filings. Its quarterly report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission lists the bonds it has sold, the leases it has signed and the promises it has made. The notes at the back put a number on each one.

Meta Platforms is a clear case to learn this on. It pays for its AI build with its own cash, large bond sales and joint ventures that keep billions of dollars of debt off its books. BloFin offers Meta in two forms, the token on the METAX/USDT Spot market and a leveraged contract, the METAUSDT Perpetual, and each tracks the share price these promises feed into.

How is Meta paying for its AI data centers?

Meta pays for its AI data centers in four ways: cash from its apps, its own bonds, joint ventures that own campuses Meta rents, and long leases. On June 30, 2026 its bonds came to $84.0 billion, and its first joint venture alone, Hyperion in Louisiana, carries about $27 billion of building costs (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Each route lands in a different place in Meta's accounts, and that is the part headlines skip. Cash and bonds pay for buildings Meta owns outright, so the spending shows up as capital spending and the borrowing shows up as debt. A joint venture works the other way: an outside fund owns most of the campus and borrows in its own name, while Meta signs a lease and pays rent.

Meta's quarterly filing lists both bond sales among its debts, while the July leases appear only in a note on future commitments (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). The largest route of all, the cash Meta's apps bring in, arrives every quarter in place of one big deal. What that cash leaves over after Meta's AI capex is its free cash flow, the money left for shareholders and for paying down debt.

There is also a fifth way to get computing power without building anything. Meta rents computing power from cloud providers under multi-year contracts, which adds capacity quickly but commits it to pay for that capacity over several years (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Meta's AI data center sites and their power

Meta's data center website lists 33 locations, 28 of them in the US. Three of them are the AI campuses Meta has described in the most detail: Prometheus in Ohio, Hyperion in Louisiana and the new El Paso campus in Texas (source: Meta data center locations). Each one is paid for in a different way.

Mark Zuckerberg named Prometheus in July 2025 as the first of several clusters of more than a gigawatt, saying it would come online in 2026 (source: The Register). A gigawatt is a billion watts, roughly what a large power station makes. AI campuses are measured by the power they draw, because the chips inside use so much of it.

Power is part of the bill too. In January 2026 Meta signed deals with Vistra, TerraPower and Oklo for up to 6.6GW of nuclear power by 2035, partly for the grids that serve Prometheus (source: Meta nuclear energy announcement). For Hyperion, Meta says it will fund seven new gas-fired power plants, three grid-scale batteries and nuclear upgrades through the local utility, Entergy (source: Meta Louisiana expansion post).

The Hyperion joint venture with Blue Owl

Meta calls Hyperion its largest data center to date (source: Meta Richland Parish data center page). Since October 21, 2025 it has belonged to a joint venture. Funds managed by Blue Owl Capital hold 80% and Meta holds 20%. The two sides agreed to fund about $27 billion of building costs in that split, and Meta leases the finished campus from the venture (source: Meta and Blue Owl announcement).

Split $27 billion that way and Meta's share comes to about $5.4 billion, against about $21.6 billion for Blue Owl's funds. When the deal closed, Blue Owl's funds put in about $7 billion of cash, and Meta took a one-time payment of about $3 billion out of the venture. Meta's own stake came from the land and part-built buildings it handed over, which it had earlier marked for sale (source: Meta and Blue Owl announcement).

The project's debt was raised through a company set up for the deal, Beignet Investor, which sold $27 billion of 6.581% notes due in 2049. S&P Global rated them A+ when they were issued (source: Reuters column via The Edge Malaysia). Meta leases the whole campus, and its rent, together with a guarantee on the campus's value, is what services those notes (source: IFR analysis of the deal).

The 5GW expansion and the joint venture

On July 13, 2026 Meta said it is expanding Hyperion to 5GW of compute capacity, an investment of more than $50 billion in the Richland Parish region (source: Meta Louisiana expansion post). The post covers jobs, roads, school programs and power plants, and it leaves out who will own or pay for the extra buildings.

So only part of the plan is known to sit inside the joint venture. Meta's quarterly filing for the period to June 30, 2026 still describes the venture's commitment as about $27 billion of building costs (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). The post does not say how the rest of the more than $50 billion will be paid for, or whether any of it will sit inside the venture.

What the Hyperion deal commits Meta to

The Hyperion deal commits Meta to three things: rent, a guarantee on the campus's value and its own share of the building costs. Meta's filing put its largest possible loss on the venture at $46.0 billion on June 30, 2026. That is about 15.8 times the $2.9 billion its 20% stake was worth on its books, worked out (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

A residual value guarantee covers a shortfall in what an asset is worth later on. Meta gave one for the first 16 years of operations. If Meta stops renewing or ends a lease and certain conditions are met, it pays the venture a capped amount based on what the campus is then worth (source: Meta and Blue Owl announcement). The guaranteed level stood at about $28 billion on June 30, 2026 and falls over time. That is 103.7% of the $27 billion the campus is expected to cost, worked out (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Say you are a Meta shareholder in 2033, and Meta decides after the first four-year lease that it has no further use for one Hyperion building. The building's fair value, what it would sell for, at that time is then compared with its guaranteed level. If it is worth at least that level, Meta pays nothing under the guarantee. Now suppose newer chips have made it worth $2 billion against a guaranteed level of $3 billion. If the guarantee's other conditions are met, Meta can owe up to that $1 billion shortfall, paid from cash that could otherwise fund dividends or new building.

Meta judges that payment unlikely. Its filing says guarantee payments "are not probable", so it records no liability for them, and it leaves the venture's debt out of its own accounts (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

The El Paso venture with BlackRock

The El Paso venture copies the Hyperion model at a smaller size. Announced on July 28, 2026, it gives funds managed by BlackRock 80% of a 1GW campus in Texas and Meta 20% once it closes. Building it costs about $14 billion, and Meta will lease all of it once it starts coming online in 2028 (source: Meta El Paso venture announcement).

The El Paso guaranteed level equals 92.9% of the campus's expected cost, against 103.7% at Hyperion. Meta also hands over about $2.3 billion of land and part-built buildings, and part of BlackRock's investment is paid for with a $12.5 billion debt financing (source: Meta El Paso venture announcement).

That debt was sold in late July 2026. Bloomberg reported that the bonds tied to the El Paso campus were priced at a 7.534% yield, "a level more common in junk bonds". It added that demand during the sale looked tepid by one standard measure, though the bonds rallied once trading began (source: Bloomberg). In its quarterly filing, Meta described the venture as still subject to final agreements and closing conditions (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Meta's bonds and credit ratings

Meta's own borrowing has grown fast. Its two bond sales of October 2025 and April 2026 made up 65.5% of the $84.0 billion of notes it owed on June 30, 2026, worked out (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). The April notes were rated Aa3 by Moody's and AA- by S&P when they were sold, each three steps below the top grade (source: Meta bond term sheet, April 2026).

Both sales are unsecured, so lenders rely on Meta's credit and on no particular building. Meta's AA- from S&P sits one step above the A+ given to the Hyperion notes. The April term sheet also shows how much more lenders charge for time. The five-year notes pay 4.55% a year, while the 40-year notes, due in 2066, pay 6.45%. The October 2025 sale ran from 4.2% on notes due in 2030 to 5.75% on notes due in 2065 (source: Meta bond prospectus, October 2025).

Add up the coupons, the fixed yearly interest rates the notes pay, on those twelve series and the two sales cost Meta about $3.0 billion of interest a year. That is the price of borrowing at fixed rates for decades, and it is paid whether or not the data centers earn what Meta hopes.

Meta's repayment dates are spread out, so little of the debt comes due soon (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). Only $10.3 billion falls due from 2027 to 2030, and 87.8% of the principal is due after 2030, worked out. Meta also pays no principal at all in the rest of 2026.

The Hyperion bonds and Meta's credit in September 2026

Bond markets have grown more cautious about the debt behind AI campuses. On Monday, September 28, 2026, the Hyperion notes traded at 91 cents on the dollar, a yield of up to 7.55% (source: Reuters column via The Edge Malaysia). A yield is the yearly return a buyer at that price earns if every payment is made.

The cost of insuring Meta's own debt against default rose to close to 1 percentage point a year. The yield gap tells the same story. The notes yielded about 2.3 points more than US government bonds that day, below a record 2.55 points in July (source: Reuters column via The Edge Malaysia). The same column notes S&P's warning that substantial credit risk could pass to Meta while the campus is built and run.

A price of 91 cents means the notes traded below what they will repay. They pay 6.581% a year on whatever principal is still owed, and they repay that principal in installments up to 2049, not in one sum at the end (source: IFR). Say you bought $1,000 of principal still owed on September 28 for about $910. You would earn about 7.2% a year from the interest alone, worked out, plus a gain of about 9 cents on every dollar repaid at face.

Meta's payments stayed the same that day. What changed is the return investors want for lending against an AI campus. Part of the rise came from US government bond yields, which the same column put at their highest since before the global financial crisis. The rest came from a wider gap over those bonds than at launch, the market's way of pricing more risk (source: Reuters column via The Edge Malaysia). Meta's rent is the main income behind those bonds, so their price shows how lenders judge Meta's promises.

Each quarterly report brings the next update, released after Nasdaq's close on a date Meta posts in advance on its investor relations site (source: Meta Investor Relations). The quarterly filing that follows refreshes the Hyperion figures, the lease totals and the El Paso status, in the notes of Meta's earnings report.

You can watch the reaction to that report as it happens, on the METAX/USDT Spot page for the token or on the METAUSDT Perpetual page for the contract, where the funding rate sits beside the price.

What off-balance-sheet financing means for shareholders

Off-balance-sheet financing means the debt sits with someone else while the company still makes the payments that service it. For Meta, the joint venture borrows and Meta pays rent. So the rent, the guarantee and leases that have not started yet all stay outside the debt figure most investors check first.

The biggest of these items is the leases. On June 30, 2026 Meta had signed leases worth about $279.0 billion that had not yet started, running from late 2026 to 2036 with terms of up to 30 years. In July 2026 it signed about $68 billion more, starting in 2027 and 2028 (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). Together that is about $347 billion of future rent, 4.1 times Meta's long-term debt, worked out.

A lease moves onto the balance sheet only when it starts, so most of that rent will appear over the next decade as each data center opens. Some data sites count lease payments as debt when they value a company, which lifts Meta's enterprise value above the figure built from its borrowings alone.

Three things could turn these promises into real costs for shareholders. Meta could stop renewing a lease while a campus is worth less than its guarantee, and then owe the difference. Meta could be judged to control a venture, which would bring the venture's debt onto Meta's books. Or lenders could keep asking for higher yields, which raises the cost of every new deal Meta signs.

The trade-off is flexibility. Meta says the Hyperion structure was "designed to support the speed and flexibility required for Meta's data center projects" (source: Meta and Blue Owl announcement). A four-year lease lets Meta walk away sooner than a 20-year lease would. The guarantee protects the investors who paid for the campus if it does.

What Meta's financing means for METAX and METAUSDT holders

METAX and the METAUSDT Perpetual each track Meta's share price, so the rent, guarantees and bond costs reach you through that price, never as a separate charge. When lenders demand more to fund Meta's campuses, that is a signal about risk which can move the shares, and the token and the contract move with them.

If you already hold crypto, a bond below face value is like a backed token, such as tokenized Meta (METAX), trading below the value of what backs it. Part of the gap is the market's price for doubt about the backing, and part of it reflects interest rates elsewhere. With the Hyperion notes at 91 cents, lenders were pricing some extra doubt about the AI campus, even though the rent Meta owes had not changed.

How you hold Meta changes how fast that risk reaches you. The token, METAX, is backed by Meta shares, while the perpetual adds leverage. So a fall in the shares after a weak financing update hits a leveraged position several times over. Weigh METAX against the perpetual on leverage and cost, and note that on the META perpetual orders can be limited to reduce-only outside US trading hours.

For a shareholder, the bonds, leases and guarantees sit on top of the AI spending itself, which leads the case against Meta stock as one of the main risks.

Looking to follow how Meta pays for its AI build through its next report? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the METAX/USDT Spot trading page or the METAUSDT Perpetual trading page.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Blue Owl Capital?

Blue Owl Capital is an investment firm that manages money in private markets. It reported more than $319 billion of assets under management on June 30, 2026, spread across lending, real assets and stakes in other investment firms (source: Blue Owl). Its funds own 80% of Hyperion, while Meta manages the building work and runs the property for the venture.

How much interest does Meta pay on its bonds?

Meta's notes carry interest rates from 3.5% on notes sold in 2022 to 6.45% on notes due in 2066. After discounts and fees, the effective rates run from about 3.63% to 6.48% (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter). The same filing put the market value of all the notes at $79.8 billion on June 30, 2026. That was below their $84.0 billion face value, the amount Meta will repay.

Why do the Hyperion leases start with only four years?

Hyperion's leases start with a four-year term and options to extend, which Meta says gives it "long-term strategic flexibility" (source: Meta and Blue Owl announcement). Its other data center leases run far longer. The ones it signed in July 2026 have terms of 18 to 20 years from the start (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Could Meta have to put the Hyperion debt on its balance sheet?

It could if Meta came to control the venture. Accounting rules make a company show another entity's debt when it is the primary beneficiary, meaning, in the filing's words, it has "the power to direct the activities that most significantly impact" the venture's economic performance. Meta's filing concludes that it is not the primary beneficiary of the Hyperion venture, so it leaves the venture's debt out of its own (source: Meta Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter).

Does Meta pay for the power its data centers use?

Meta says it pays the full costs for the energy its data centers use. Its nuclear agreements include 20-year purchases from Vistra's Perry and Davis-Besse plants in Ohio, and funding for two TerraPower reactors that could deliver power as early as 2032 (source: Meta nuclear energy announcement). Meta also supports an Oklo nuclear campus planned in Pike County, Ohio, which could come online as early as 2030.

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Meta's Form 10-Q for the June 2026 quarter, its bond prospectus of October 2025 and bond term sheet of April 2026, its announcements of the Hyperion and El Paso ventures, its Louisiana expansion and nuclear energy posts, its data center locations and Richland Parish pages and its notice of the third-quarter 2026 report. News sources include Bloomberg, IFR, a Reuters column republished by The Edge Malaysia and The Register. BloFin's markets are METAX/USDT and the METAUSDT Perpetual, current as of October 15, 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Meta in any form. Meta has promised tens of billions of dollars in rent and guarantees that sit outside its reported debt, and a fall in a campus's value or a rise in borrowing costs can reach its share price. A holder of the stock, METAX or the METAUSDT Perpetual can lose money if the market reprices that risk, and a leveraged perpetual position can be liquidated in a sharp move. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.