Aug 7 (Reuters) - Meta has tapped U.S. bond

giant PIMCO and alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital

to spearhead a $29 billion financing for its data center

expansion in rural Louisiana, a person familiar with the matter

told Reuters.

PIMCO will handle about $26 billion of debt, likely to be

issued in the form of bonds, while Blue Owl will contribute $3

billion in equity, the person said, speaking on condition of

anonymity.

Bloomberg News, which first reported the deal, said that the

company has been working with Morgan Stanley ( MS ) to raise

funds, while Apollo Global Management ( APO ) and KKR

were also in the running to lead the deal until the closing

stage of negotiations.

Meta, PIMCO and Blue Owl declined to comment on the report.

The deal comes as Meta looks for partners to help fund its

AI infrastructure push. Last week, the company said in a filing

that it planned to offload about $2 billion in data center

assets as part of a co-development strategy to share the costs

of building facilities for generative AI.

In July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company

would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several

massive AI data centers for its superintelligence unit,

intensifying his pursuit of a technology he has chased with a

talent war for top engineers.

Its first multi-gigawatt data center, dubbed Prometheus, is

expected to come online in 2026, while another, called Hyperion,

will be able to scale up to 5 GW over the coming years,

Zuckerberg said in a post last month on his Threads social media

platform.

In June, the Financial Times reported that Meta was seeking

to raise $29 billion from private capital firms to build AI data

centers in the U.S., adding that the company is debating how to

structure the debt raise and is also evaluating options to raise

more capital.