Meta Invests $1.5 Billion in Massive AI-Optimized Data Center in El Paso, Texas

Meta commits $1.5 billion for AI data center in Texas

The data center in El Paso, Meta's third in Texas, is expected to come online in 2028, and can scale to a 1-gigawatt site - enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco for a day - making it one of the largest planned data center campuses in the US. Meta Platforms said on Wednesday it would invest $1.5 billion in a data center in Texas, breaking ground at its 29th such facility globally, as the social media giant expands infrastructure to support artificial intelligence workloads. The data center in El Paso, Meta's third in Texas, is expected to come online in 2028, and can scale to a 1-gigawatt site - enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco for a day - making it one of the largest planned data center campuses in the US. Large-scale cloud service providers, called hyperscalers, have been racing to build AI infrastructure, with Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft projected to spend over $360 billion in 2025, according to company filings. Most of the investment is expected to go toward powering data centers. The new facility is projected to create about 100 jobs once operational, with over 1,800 construction workers expected onsite at peak construction, Meta said in a statement. The company cited El Paso's robust electrical grid and skilled workforce as factors in the site selection. Meta has invested over $10 billion in Texas and employs more than 2,500 people across the state, the company said. These figures include the latest investment. The company is putting up $1.5 billion of its own money to fund the current phase of the El Paso site. Wednesday's announcement follows Meta's recent $29 billion off-balance-sheet deal with Pimco and Blue Owl to fund a data center campus in Louisiana. "The fastest gazelle finds their place, others follow, and Meta is the fastest gazelle in the industry, as far as I'm concerned," Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, a local economic development and policy advocacy group involved in facilitating the project, told Reuters. "We've had others look at the region, other data centers, and we expect there probably to be others that will want to follow." Barela said the Meta project first came from a referral from Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office about four years ago, and El Paso offered a package of tax incentives and other measures to attract the company. Meta said the data center will be matched with 100% renewable energy. The facility will use a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that continuously recycles water. Meta pledged to restore twice the water consumed by the data center to local watersheds, exceeding its 2030 goal to be "water-positive" by restoring more water than it consumes.

Meta to build $1.5 billion AI data center in Texas By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) announced plans to build a new gigawatt-sized data center in El Paso, Texas, to support its artificial intelligence initiatives. The company will invest more than $1.5 billion in the facility, according to a report from Bloomberg, citing blog post published Wednesday. The data center will eventually have 1 gigawatt of capacity dedicated to powering high-end computing chips for AI-related projects. The Texas facility represents the latest in a series of major investments by Meta as it works to maintain its position in the competitive AI industry. The company expects the new data center to become operational in 2028. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Meta Platforms : Breaking Ground on Our New AI-Optimized Data Center in El Paso

We're breaking ground on a new, cutting-edge AI-focused data center that can scale to a 1GW data center site. Located in El Paso, Texas, this will be our 29th data center, and will help us to deliver top-tier AI models as we work to fulfill the possibilities of AI and build toward superintelligence. We're proud to be collaborating withThe Borderplex Alliance , the economic development agency representing El Paso, to bring this data center to life. Building for the Future of AI This will be a powerhouse data center optimized to support our growing AI workloads and will be essential to bringing our technologies to life. An example of industry-leading infrastructure, this data center can scale to 1GW and represents a pivotal moment as we invest in our AI work. AI, and its inference and training needs, is still evolving, so our design needs to balance what we know today with what we might know in the future. Different AI configurations will require different approaches to hardware and network systems designs, so our new data centers are built to accommodate flexibility. For example, we've designed the El Paso data center to have systems that can support both the traditional servers of today and future generations of AI-enabled hardware. Our data centers are more than just buildings - the hardware they contain enables us to continue to innovate and deliver models that help people all over the world connect, find community, and grow businesses. From smart glasses and AI assistants to live translations and video editing tools, our products rely on data centers like this one. Supporting the El Paso Community El Paso is a vibrant city with robust infrastructure and a skilled workforce, and we're thrilled to contribute to El Paso's economic growth and technological advancement with the construction of our newest data center. We're committed to playing a positive role in the long-term vitality of the communities that host our data centers, and are collaborating with local partners to fulfill this goal. Once completed, the facility will represent an investment of more than $1.5 billion and will support approximately 100 operational jobs. We anticipate that over 1,800 construction workers will be onsite at peak. We're also supporting local El Paso-area small businesses through our Community Accelerator program, which builds digital skills and shows how to leverage AI tools, including Meta AI, to help them grow their businesses. And we're bringing ourCommunity Action Grants to El Paso next year. This is our third data center in Texas, and altogether, these three data centers have supported thousands of jobs for skilled workers in the state. In total, Meta has invested over $10 billion in Texas and has more than 2,500 full-time employees across the state between our data centers, offices, and research lab. Prioritizing Environmental Stewardship We design and build our data centers with efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability in mind, and our data center buildings will achieve LEED Gold certification once they are operational. This means our buildings meet high standards for energy efficiency, clean and renewable energy, water conservation, supply chain responsibility, and recycling. Water We strive to be good water stewards in communities where we have data centers. That's why we plan to use a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system in this data center that will use zero water for a majority of the year. We've also set an ambitious goal for ourselves - we aim to be water positive in 2030, meaning we'll restore more water than we consume. And in El Paso, will restore 200% of the water consumed by our El Paso Data Center to local watersheds. To meet this goal, we've partnered with local organizations to support water restoration projects that benefit the local community. In collaboration with DigDeep, we'll help provide running water to El Paso communities in need. We'll also collaborate with Texas Water Action Collaborative on water restoration projects in the El Paso community. Electricity Our El Paso data center's electricity use will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy. And through our agreement with El Paso Electric, we've paid for new grid infrastructure required to connect the data center, including new transmission lines and substations. We're thrilled to break ground on this new data center and look forward to continuing to build the infrastructure needed to develop AI.