Meta Platforms Inc. today pledged to invest $600 billion in the U.S. as part of its artificial intelligence push.
The company plans to spend the capital over three years. It will invest in new AI data centers, supporting infrastructure such as power transmission lines and workforce expansion.
Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg first floated the $600 billion plan during a September dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump. The company may have delayed its formal announcement of the plan to today because two of its flagship AI investments were only finalized in the past three weeks. Those investments will see the Facebook parent grow its data center capacity by about 3 gigawatts.
The larger of the two deals is a $27 billion joint venture agreement with an investment firm called Blue Owl. Under the agreement, Blue Owl will help Meta finance the construction of its flagship Hyperion data center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana. The Facebook parent is set to receive $7 billion in financing through the transaction.
The Hyperion campus is expected to host nine buildings with about four million square feet of combined floor space. According to Meta, those buildings will host 2 gigawatts worth of computing equipment. Hyperion is expected to become fully operational in 2030.
Meta has partnered with Entergy Corp., a publicly traded utility, to build new power generation infrastructure for the campus. Entergy will construct a $3.2 billion natural gas power plant in Louisiana along with supporting hardware such as power transmission lines. The plant is expected to generate 1.5 gigawatts of power, or about three-quarters of what Hyperion will require.
Around the time it inked the joint venture agreement with Blue Owl, Meta announced plans to build another AI data center campus (pictured) in El Paso. The site is expected to provide up to one gigawatt worth of computing capacity. Similarly to Hyperion, the campus will be supported by new power transmission infrastructure that Meta is building to support its AI workloads.
The company stated today that it’s “bringing more than $20 billion in business” to the subcontractors involved in its data center projects. Those contractors include, among others, steel workers, pipefitters, electricians and fiber technicians. Meta estimates that it has supported over 30,000 skilled trade jobs since 2010.
Meta today also pledged to become water positive by 2030. That means it will restore more freshwater to the environment than what its data center consume.
The El Paso data center campus is set to play an important role in that effort. Last month, Meta announced plans to partner with local organizations on a series of water restoration initiatives. Meta estimates that it will restore twice as much freshwater to the environment as the amount consumed by its El Paso site.
It’s possible the company will equip the upcoming data centers facilities with custom silicon. In September, Meta reportedly acquired a startup called Rivos Inc. that was working on an AI inference chip. The processor combines a graphics card with multiple RISC-V central processing units.
Image: Meta
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