Meta to build $1.5B AI data center in Texas
What's the story
Meta, the parent company of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, has announced plans to build a new gigawatt (GW)-sized data center in El Paso, Texas. The facility will be Meta's 29th globally and its third in the Lone Star State. The tech giant is investing over $1.5 billion into this project as part of its ongoing efforts to expand infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.
Facility features
New facility expected to go online by 2028
The new data center will be able to scale up to a 1GW site, enough energy to power San Francisco for a day. It is expected to come online by 2028 and will support both today's traditional servers and future generations of AI-enabled hardware. The facility will create around 100 operational jobs and employ over 1,800 construction workers at its peak.
Eco-friendly initiatives
Meta's commitment to sustainability
The El Paso data center will be powered by 100% renewable energy, according to Meta The company has also promised to restore twice the water consumed by the facility back into local watersheds. This is part of a wider strategy to become "water-positive" by 2030, a goal that this new commitment exceeds.
Financial footprint
Ongoing investment in Texas
Meta has invested over $10 billion across three data centers in Texas. The company employs more than 2,500 full-time employees across its data centers, offices, and research labs in the state. This latest investment is part of Meta's broader strategy to ramp up AI infrastructure spending by hyperscalers like Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, and itself.