Meta’s Hyperion data centre in rural Louisiana has ballooned from $10bn to more than $50bn in under two years. In a parish of 20,000 people, it has made some locals a fortune and priced others out of their homes.
Meta just made its biggest AI bet bigger. On Monday the company said its Hyperion data centre in Richland Parish, Louisiana, will grow into a 5-gigawatt site costing more than $50bn. It is now Meta’s largest data centre, and one of the biggest AI projects anywhere.
The number is the story. When construction began in December 2024, the price tag was $10bn. By October it was $27bn, CNBC reports, after Meta formed a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital. Now it is past $50bn. The cost has quintupled in under two years.
A town cut in two #
Richland Parish has about 20,000 people and is one of the poorest in Louisiana. A project this size does not land quietly.
For some, it has been a windfall. Meta says it has contracted more than $1.6bn with local firms and will fund over $1bn in roads, water and wastewater. Scott Holmes, who runs a local charter-bus company, told Meta his fleet grew from 40 coaches to 102. His drivers on site now earn more than $80,000, in a region where the median income is $42,000.
For others, it has felt like an eviction notice. As thousands of construction workers pour in, rents have climbed and traffic has thickened, [Fortune reports](https://fortune.com/2026/07/13/meta-hyperion-louisiana-50-billion-tax-breaks-locals/). Erika James, a 34-year-old mother of two who grew up in the parish, has been pushed 30 minutes away to a mobile home park. “There is literally a sign outside welcoming Meta workers while local families are left wondering where they’re supposed to go”, she told Fortune. “There is nowhere to go if you can’t pay triple prices.”
The tax break that pays teachers #
The economics are unusual. In late 2024, Governor Jeff Landry signed a law making data centres built before 2029 exempt from sales tax for 20 years. Meta still pays a 1 percent local sales tax on its purchases.
On a $50bn build, 1 percent adds up. A local ordinance funnels that money into school bonuses. Some Richland Parish teachers received cheques of more than $50,000 this year, up from $10,000, according to Meta. The average teacher in Louisiana earns $56,785.
The catch is timing. The windfall is tied to the construction phase, and officials expect it to shrink once the building stops. “Sales tax at that level may be somewhat temporary”, a parish chamber director told the Wall Street Journal.
The state is candid about the trade. Meta made clear it would not build without incentives, Louisiana’s economic development chief said. One lawyer who negotiated the deal was blunter still. “We’re only giving this to get them here”, he told the Times-Picayune. “We don’t want to give them a dollar more than we have to.”
Who pays for the power #
Then there is the grid. To feed Hyperion, the utility Entergy is building new gas plants and 240 miles of transmission lines, all paid for by Meta. Meta says it covers the full cost of energy and water so residents do not, and points to a deal it says will save Entergy customers more than $2bn.
Consumer groups are not convinced. Earthjustice asked regulators to examine Meta’s financing, under which it sold about 80 percent of the data centre to a venture-debt firm. Ratepayers, it warned, could still be left holding the bill. Regulators declined to open a probe in February. It is the same fear that has dogged Meta’s campuses elsewhere.
A national mood #
Richland Parish is not alone. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are chasing the same tax breaks, and Amazon alone has pledged $12bn to data centres in north-west Louisiana. The land rush is everywhere.
So is the pushback. A Gallup poll in March found seven in 10 Americans oppose an AI data centre in their area, more than oppose living near a nuclear plant. In April, Maine became the first state to bar large-scale data centres. Scotland has weighed a freeze of its own. The bill for the AI boom is coming due, and towns like Richland Parish are still working out who has to pay it.
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