June 27 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms is seeking to raise $29 billion from private capital firms to build artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S., the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The Facebook-parent has advanced discussions with private credit investors including Apollo Global Management, KKR, Brookfield, Carlyle and PIMCO, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Meta is looking to raise $3 billion in equity and $26 billion in debt, the report said, adding that the company is debating how to structure the debt raising and may also seek to raise more capital.

Such a fundraising comes at a time when Meta has doubled down its commitment to artificial intelligence, including a $14.8 billion investment in startup Scale AI.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said in January the company would spend as much as $65 billion this year to expand its AI infrastructure, seeking to strengthen its position against competitors OpenAI and Google in the race to lead the AI technology landscape.

Meta and Carlyle declined to comment, while Apollo Global, KKR, Brookfield and PIMCO did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Meta was working with its advisers at Morgan Stanley to arrange the financing, and it was considering ways that could make the debt more easily tradeable once it was issued, the FT report said.

Major tech companies are investing heavily to secure the vast computing power needed to run AI models, fueling demand for specialized data centers that link thousands of chips into high-performance clusters.

Microsoft has planned a capital expenditure of $80 billion in fiscal 2025, with most of it aimed at expanding data centers to ease capacity bottlenecks for AI services.

Bloomberg News reported in February that Apollo Global Management is in talks to lead a roughly $35 billion financing package for Meta to help develop data centers in the United States.