July 13 (Reuters) - Meta said on Monday its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, will expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, with investment in the project increasing to more than $50 billion.
The planned data center, known as Hyperion, was earlier projected to deliver more than 2 gigawatts of compute capacity to support training of large language models, the technology behind tools such as ChatGPT.
Here are some details:
• The announcement comes as environmental and consumer groups increasingly
push back against the energy-intensive buildout.
• U.S. environmental law group Earthjustice's request to investigate the financing of Meta's Louisiana data center project was denied earlier this year.
• Earthjustice had said the financing arrangement could ultimately shift project costs unfairly onto utility customers if Meta walks away from the project before the utility recovers its investment.
• Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump had said the company's data center project would cost $50 billion.
• Since breaking ground in December 2024, local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion in contracts from Meta, the company said.
• With this expansion, the company said it plans to invest over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems.
• Meta, like its Big Tech peers, has been pouring billions of dollars into AI data centers and computing power, as demand continues to outstrip supply.
• The company has pledged to invest $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, as it builds out massive data centers to power CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive bets on AI agent technologies.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo and Devika Syamnath)
