Meta is going all in on artificial intelligence, and its clearest bet just got a lot bigger. The company confirmed a massive expansion of its Richland Parish data center in Louisiana, tripling planned capacity from two gigawatts to five. That push lifts total investment past $50 billion, turning the Hyperion campus into one of the largest data centers in history.
The scale here is genuinely hard to grasp, because five gigawatts is enough power for millions of homes, and Meta will pour it all into AI compute. President Trump once held up a graphic comparing the site to the size of Manhattan. The cost has since ballooned too, climbing from an initial $10 billion estimate to $27 billion last year, and now beyond $50 billion.
For a rural parish of about 20,000 people, the local impact reads like a windfall. The project is expected to support roughly 7,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent roles. Louisiana businesses have already won more than $1.6 billion in contracts since work began in 2024. Meta is also spending over $1 billion on local roads, water, and wastewater systems.
The community benefits stretch into classrooms as well. Richland Parish teachers recently received annual bonuses of up to $50,000, funded by the project’s tax revenue. Meta is donating $5 million to a local community college for worker training. Every 2026 high school graduate in the parish now qualifies for a full data center trade scholarship.
Not everyone is cheering for this data center, as we have seen many locals protesting against these developments.
“It’s really important … to speak very openly about some concerns that people have in this state and across the country about what does this kind of an investment really mean,” said Meta president Dina Powell McCormick. “We care about the people that we’re working with. We want to be the very best partners that this state could possibly have.”
Independent water researchers warn that the facility’s real consumption needs close monitoring, since state oversight remains thin. To power it, Entergy plans seven new gas plants, three grid batteries, and nuclear upgrades. Meta says it will cover its own energy, water, and infrastructure costs, and that a smart energy deal should save grid customers over $2 billion across 20 years.
