By Katie Paul
Feb 11 (Reuters) - Meta said on Wednesday it was breaking ground on a $10 billion data center in Indiana, as it races to secure the massive amounts of computing power needed to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
The facility is designed to deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity once operational, the social media giant said. According to U.S. power grid operators, that is the equivalent of powering about 800,000 homes.
The announcement comes as Meta and other big tech companies compete
to out-build each other with increasingly supersized data centers to get ahead in what executives see as a once-in-a-generation AI race, even as environmental and consumer groups increasingly push back against the energy-intensive expansion.
Meta said in November that it will invest $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, including data centers.
Rachel Peterson, Meta's vice president for data centers, told Reuters the new facility in Lebanon, Indiana, should come online at the end of 2027 or early 2028.
"We're going to be pushing a lot of capacity through construction very quickly at this site," said Peterson.
She said Meta had agreements with local utility providers in place to supply power to the data center and was "paying our own way" for related energy infrastructure upgrades.
Meta sealed a $27 billion financing deal in October with alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital to fund a 2-gigawatt Louisiana data center, its biggest project globally, and said it would invest $1.5 billion in a data center in Texas.
U.S. environmental law group Earthjustice asked utility regulators to investigate the financing of the Louisiana project last month, saying it threatens to leave everyday homes and businesses on the hook for build-out costs.
Peterson declined to comment on financing plans for the Indiana facility, but said Meta was covering the full $10 billion investment at the outset.
(Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Aurora Ellis)
