Meta Expands Louisiana AI Data Center Into A $50 Billion Megaproject
Some history helps frame how fast this thing has ballooned. When Meta broke ground in December 2024, the project reportedly carried a price tag of around $10 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg later said the supercluster, codenamed Hyperion, would eventually scale to 5 gigawatts, and by October 2025 the company had formed a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital committing roughly $27 billion in development costs. Nine months later, the official number has nearly doubled again. Nor is Louisiana an isolated bet, as Meta broke ground just last week on its first Canadian data center, a 1-gigawatt site in Alberta, the 33rd facility in its global fleet. With chipmakers posting record data center revenue quarter after quarter, the build-out frenzy shows no sign of cooling.
The economic shockwave in Richland Parish is hard to overlook. Thanks to increased tax revenue from the project, teachers in the parish school district received bonuses topping $50,000 this year, up from $10,000 the year before. Superintendent Sheldon Jones called the money "life-altering for our teachers and their families," adding that for the first time in his 30-year career, every teacher the district interviewed was fully certified.
According to Meta, local businesses are riding the same wave. The tech titan says it has awarded more than $1.6 billion in contracts to Louisiana companies since construction began, a figure that stood at $875 million as recently as December, meaning local contracting nearly doubled in seven months. One coffee shop near the site says it has grown from 40 customers on a good day to over 130, while a regional charter bus operator expanded its fleet from 40 coaches to 102 just to shuttle workers. Its drivers now earn over $80,000 a year in a region where the median income sits at $42,000.
Staffing the finished facility is its own challenge. Meta is donating $5 million to Louisiana Delta Community College to fund workforce training, and beginning with the class of 2026, every Richland Parish high school graduate qualifies for a full scholarship toward a data center trade certificate. Construction has already supported 3,700 workers, with Meta projecting a peak of 5,000 by mid-2026, and once operational the campus will support more than 1,000 permanent jobs, double the figure Meta cited in December. The company's local infrastructure spend on roads, water, and wastewater systems has more than tripled since then, now topping $1 billion.
Richland Parish's enthusiasm makes it something of an outlier, though. A Gallup poll earlier this year found roughly seven in ten Americans oppose new data centers being built near their homes, up sharply from late 2025, with rising electric bills, strained water supplies, and lost open land topping the list of grievances. Dozens of jurisdictions have enacted moratoriums, and the White House has pressed AI giants to pay their own way on grid upgrades rather than letting costs land on ratepayers.
Meta's arrangement here reads like a direct answer to that pressure. Under its energy agreement with Entergy Louisiana, the company pays the full cost of the energy, water, and related infrastructure the data center uses so ratepayers do not. The latest deal funds seven new natural gas plants, three grid-scale batteries, and nuclear uprates at existing facilities, which Entergy projects will save customers more than $2 billion over 20 years, on top of $650 million tied to the first agreement. Meta has also pledged to return 100% of the data center's water consumption to the surrounding watersheds, targeting the other big fear that fuels opposition nationwide.
The full bill may run far higher than the headline number. Meta reportedly plans to spend an additional $200 billion on the site, largely on AI chips, which would push the total past a quarter-trillion dollars, though the company has confirmed nothing beyond the $50 billion. For now, Richland Parish is enjoying a genuine windfall, one that seven in 10 Americans apparently want no part of. Whether Meta's neighborly promises and current economic booms hold up once the construction crews pack up will help decide which side of that poll gets proven right.
