July 13 (Reuters) - Meta said on Monday its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana will expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, in a bid to support the social media company's AI ambitions.
Since breaking ground in December 2024, local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion in contracts from Meta, the company said.
Here are some details:
• Meta said that the data center expansion is an investment of more than $50 billion in the Richland Parish region.
• Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump had said the company's data center project would cost $50 billion.
• With this expansion, the company said it plans to invest over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems.
• Meta, like its Big Tech peers, has been pouring billions of dollars into AI data centers and computing power, as demand continues to outstrip supply.
• The company has pledged to invest $600 billion in U.S. infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, as it builds out massive data centers to power CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive bets on AI agent technologies.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)