Meta has announced plans to invest $1.5 billion in a new data center in El Paso, Texas, as part of its continued expansion to support artificial intelligence infrastructure. The facility will be Meta’s 29th data center globally and its third in Texas.
Expected to become operational by 2028, the El Paso data center will have the capacity to scale up to one gigawatt, which is enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco for a day. Once completed, it will be among the largest planned data center campuses in the United States.
According to Meta, the project will create around 100 permanent jobs after completion and employ over 1,800 construction workers at its peak. The company said El Paso was chosen due to its reliable power grid and availability of skilled labour.
Meta has already invested more than $10 billion in Texas and employs over 2,500 people across the state, including this latest investment. The company stated that it will directly fund the $1.5 billion development phase of the El Paso site.
This announcement follows Meta’s recent $29 billion financing partnership with two investment firms to build a separate data center campus in Louisiana.
Jon Barela, CEO of a local economic development organisation that helped facilitate the project, said, “The fastest gazelle finds their place, others follow, and Meta is the fastest gazelle in the industry, as far as I’m concerned. 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 also shared that the project was initiated about four years ago through a referral from the Texas Governor’s office. The city of El Paso offered tax incentives and other benefits to attract Meta to the region.
The new data center will operate using 100 percent renewable energy and feature a closed-loop, liquid-cooling system that continuously recycles water. Meta has also committed to restoring twice the amount of water the facility uses back to local watersheds, surpassing its 2030 goal of becoming water-positive by replenishing more water than it consumes.
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