Sopaipillas. Beignets.
Once relegated to the last page of the menu, you’ll now find these delicacies in SEC filings. They’re moonlighting as the names of trusts financing Meta datacenters – nods to the states in which they’re being built.
I’ve named entities like these in my career. As a fintech founder, I raised capital to fund loan sales, often financed through independent trusts. Naming those trusts was a “fun,” near-final step in each transaction, but I treated the task semi-seriously. I knew these names could resurface at inconvenient times.
I learned that lesson the hard way, years earlier at the Federal Reserve during the Great Financial Crisis, watching Citi grapple in real time with fallout from sweetly named sidecars. Sidecars like “Beta Finance.” “Centauri Corporation.”
My favorite? “Dorada,” or “golden.”
With the benefit of nearly 20 years’ hindsight, I trust Citi executives will forgive my eyeroll.
It’s no secret capital markets have no long-term memory. It’s a tune Tea Leaves readers have heard before. Today’s verse? What’s born in the dark comes to light at inopportune times. And while an innocuous-turned-ironic name is cheap, the assumption of millions or billions in liabilities once believed sectioned off … is not.
I can’t predict the financial path of Meta’s datacenters. But I do hope someone – in the offices of Meta, its investors, its bankers – has enough historical sense to take a free lesson from Citi.
To recall that desserts can spoil.
That they can become patronizing pastries.
Tea Leaves #8: PATRONIZING PASTRIES
Originally published August 5, 2026
