How Pimco Outmaneuvered Apollo and KKR to Win $29 Billion Meta Deal

The Meta AI logo on a smartphone in July 2025. In April, Meta said it could spend as much as $72 billion on capital expenditures this year, with a focus on AI and the data centers used to train and run the models.Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

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By Carmen Arroyo and Laura Benitez

August 19, 2025 at 1:00 PM UTC

Morgan Stanley had an unusual message when it approached four of the world’s biggest asset managers in July: they had progressed to the final round of one of the most sought-after private credit deals to date. But if they wanted to get to the finish line, they would need to pair up.

The bank pitted the two teams against each other for the right to give some $29 billion to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc. so that it can build a sprawling data center in Louisiana to undergird the company’s most powerful artificial intelligence models.