Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the keynote speech at the MetaConnect annual event held at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on September 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegoso | Reuters
Meta Inc. is increasing its spending commitment more than sixfold to $10 billion for its upcoming AI data center in West Texas, with the goal of reaching 1 gigawatt of capacity by the time the facility becomes operational in 2028, the company announced Thursday.
Meta said the data center being built in El Paso will create 300 new jobs and will require more than 4,000 construction workers at peak times. The company also said it is committed to adding more than 5,000 megawatts of clean power to the grid and will work with professional non-profit organizations to reduce the water burden by providing fresh water to the region.
“Since breaking ground last year, we have been proud to call El Paso home and are committed to being a good neighbor,” the company said in a blog post Thursday.
When Meta began construction on the 1.2 million square foot site in October, the planned investment was $1.5 billion. Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice president of data center development, announced the increased investment at the annual Borderplex Alliance Summit in El Paso.
Meta is increasing spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure as it seeks to meet unprecedented and rapidly increasing demand for computing resources. In its latest earnings report in January, Meta said it would spend up to $135 billion in capital spending this year.
But unlike its technology rivals google, Amazon and microsoftMeta is not in the cloud infrastructure business, and its large spending has drawn increased scrutiny from Wall Street. The company’s stock has fallen 17% since the beginning of the year, including an 8% drop on Thursday following two painful court defeats this week related to the company’s failure to properly police Facebook and Instagram.
Meta is pouring resources into AI and cutting costs in other areas as well. On Wednesday, the company confirmed to CNBC that it is cutting hundreds of jobs across Facebook, global operations, recruiting, sales, and virtual reality.
Meta is building a 1GW AI data center in El Paso, Texas. Shown here is March 2026, five months after groundbreaking.
Provided by: Meta
However, data center expansion continues.
Meta has a total of 30 data centers, 26 of which are located in the United States, with the El Paso site being its third facility in Texas.
The company is also investing heavily in chips and systems to fill new data centers. In February, the company signed a major deal with Nvidia, advanced micro deviceand this week committed to becoming the first customer of arms New data center processor. Meta also recently announced four new versions of its in-house MTIA accelerator, which will be made publicly available for the first time in 2023.
As AI data centers continue to spring up across the country, the projects are increasingly facing opposition from nearby residents, largely due to concerns about water availability and rising electricity costs. The New York Times reported that after Meta built a $750 million data center in Georgia in 2018, the county ran out of water.
Meta announced Thursday that it is working on eight water restoration projects in Texas, including partnering with water rights nonprofit Digdeep to bring “clean water for the first time” to more than 100 homes.
The new data center will be water-cooled and use a closed-loop system that recycles water. Mehta predicts water usage at this location will be similar to a typical golf course in the area.
—CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
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