Meta Platforms Inc. said Wednesday it plans to build a $10 billion artificial intelligence data center campus in northeast Louisiana, making it the largest data center built by the company to date.

The 4 million-square-foot campus, set to be located in Richland Parish, a rural area dominated by farmland with proximity to existing utility infrastructure, is expected to break ground this month and continue through 2030.

The infrastructure planned for the data center will house networking and servers needed to process the colossal amount of data required to support the growing use of digital technologies and it would be optimized for AI workloads, which are particularly data and compute-hungry. Once it comes online, it will be able to support all of Meta’s services, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

News of this data center investment follows other companies pushing to expand their data and compute capacity to keep up with increasing demands from AI and machine learning applications and workloads.

Elon Musk’s startup, xAI Corp. recently announced plans to expand its Memphis-based AI supercomputer called Colossus. The supercomputer currently houses 100,000 graphics processing units to train the company’s AI chatbot Grok. The expansion will include at least 1 million GPUs to help the company keep up with rivals including OpenAI, Google LLC and Meta. CoreWeave Inc., the operator of a major cloud platform optimized for AI workloads, opened two data centers in the U.K. earlier this year and revealed plans to open ten more in the U.S. during 2025.

“Meta is building the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible,” said Kevin Janda, Meta’s director of data center strategy. “This data center will be an important part of that mission.”

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry said the new data center would bring new technological opportunities to the region. Louisiana Economic Development, a government agency that works to strengthen the state’s business environment, estimates the campus will open up around 1,500 jobs.

“Meta’s investment establishes the region as an anchor in Louisiana’s rapidly expanding tech sector, revitalizes one of our state’s beautiful rural areas, and creates opportunities for Louisiana workers to fill high-paying jobs of the future,” Landry said.

In addition to bringing in jobs, Meta said it would invest $200 million in local infrastructure improvements, including roads and water systems to support the data center. After the data center is operational, the company said it would launch its Community Action Grants program, which opens partnerships with local schools and organizations benefit from Meta resources to improve science, technology, engineering, art and math education.

Meta pledged to match its power use with 100% clean and renewable energy, saying it will work with Entergy Corp., a major electrical provider in the Southern United States, to bring at least 1,500 megawatts of renewable energy to the grid.

The company also said it intends to minimize water use at its data center, which can be a critical part of cooling infrastructure. NPR reports that the average midsized data center consumes around 300,000 gallons of water a day or about 1,000 U.S. households. Meta said it would reduce the impact of the new campus by restoring more water than it uses at its data center by investing in water restoration projects in Louisiana.

Image: Meta