Meta expands Louisiana data center to 5 gigawatts, tops $50 billion

Meta said on July 13 that its Richland Parish, Louisiana, data center will expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, lifting its planned investment in the Hyperion campus to more than $50 billion. The company said the site will house Hyperion, its largest multi-gigawatt AI training cluster, turning a rural North Louisiana buildout into one of the biggest single infrastructure bets in the country.

The project had previously been described as a facility that would deliver more than 2 gigawatts of capacity. Meta’s new figures show how quickly the economics of hyperscale artificial intelligence are changing, and how much power the company says it needs to train large language models. Meta now says it operates or is building 32 data centers worldwide, 28 of them in the United States.

Meta also said it plans to spend more than $1 billion on local infrastructure improvements tied to the campus, including roads, water and wastewater systems. The company said the energy agreement linked to the project will save Entergy Louisiana customers $2.65 billion over 20 years, and that Richland Parish teachers recently received annual bonuses of up to $50,000 because of increased tax revenue from the project.

The expansion lands at the center of a broader national fight over who carries the costs of the AI buildout. Environmental and consumer advocates have warned that projects of this size can lock in huge electricity demand, strain transmission and water systems, and leave households exposed if a company later changes course. Earthjustice said in January that Meta’s financing arrangement with Blue Owl Capital could leave Louisiana households paying for three new methane gas plants if Meta exited its lease arrangement.

Louisiana utility regulators declined to open a probe on February 25, and on April 15 the Louisiana Public Service Commission fast-tracked Entergy Louisiana’s application for seven gas-fired power plants intended to serve the Hyperion project. Meta broke ground on the campus in December 2024 and quietly added 1,400 adjacent acres at the end of 2025, signs that the company was preparing for a far larger footprint than it first disclosed.

For Louisiana, the project has been sold as a source of tax revenue, school bonuses and local construction spending. For the rest of the country, it is a live test of whether the public can absorb the power, water and infrastructure demands of artificial intelligence without shifting long-term risk onto ratepayers, rural communities and utility customers.