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

The final result was a particularly important win for Pimco, which has been striving to diversify beyond its background in publicly traded debt

- Bloomberg

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.

The deal was so large that Meta and Morgan Stanley didn't want to rely on just one financial firm, no matter how big, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The bankers put Pacific Investment Management Co. and Blue Owl Capital Inc. on one team, and the private capital behemoths Apollo Global Management Inc. and KKR & Co. on another, to ensure that both pairs would have the ability to fund the whole deal quickly, the people said.

The competition between the firms came to a conclusion in early August when Morgan Stanley gave the nod to Pimco and Blue Owl, Bloomberg reported. The social media giant opted for a solution that pairs one of the biggest institutional bond firms with one of the fastest-growing players in the private credit world.

The decision brought to an end a process that began in early 2025, not long after a dinner that Morgan Stanley hosted to pitch asset managers on the opportunity in funding AI infrastructure. The negotiations that ensued were so complicated that they went on for some eight months after informal discussions began, longer than some of the participants had anticipated, the people said.

All the firms involved declined to comment.