Meta Expands Its Louisiana Data Center to 5 Gigawatts — a $50 Billion Bet on AI

Meta announced Sunday it is expanding its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, backed by an investment that now exceeds $50 billion. The facility, nicknamed Hyperion, is one of the largest AI infrastructure projects on the planet — and it’s already reshaping the economy of a rural parish in northeastern Louisiana.

The expansion builds on a project first revealed in December 2024 under the codename “Project Sucre.” Meta originally estimated the cost at $10 billion, but that number has climbed steadily as the company scaled its ambitions. In October 2025, Meta partnered with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth at least $27 billion. The latest announcement pushes the total commitment past $50 billion and covers infrastructure, workforce training, plus a sweeping energy agreement with Entergy Louisiana.

The data center campus sprawls across 2,250 acres and will eventually encompass 4 million square feet of floor space. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described one of the computing clusters as covering “a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.”

Meta is paying for all the energy, water, and related infrastructure the data center consumes. “We pay the full costs so consumers aren’t paying the cost,” the company said. On top of that, Meta has committed more than $1 billion to improve local roads, water systems, and sewage treatment.

The energy deal with Entergy is the most consequential part of the expansion. It funds seven new natural-gas-fired power plants, three grid-scale battery installations, nuclear capacity upgrades, and additional purchased power. Entergy says the arrangement will save its Louisiana customers more than $2 billion over 20 years, on top of $650 million in savings from an earlier agreement.

The economic impact on Richland Parish has been dramatic. Teachers in the local school district received bonuses that grew from $10,000 last year to over $50,000 this year — a figure that has turned the parish into a destination for certified educators. For the first time in three decades, every teacher the district interviewed for the current hiring cycle was fully certified.

Local businesses have sprung up around the construction. Holy Tacos, a restaurant that started as a family dream, now feeds hundreds of people a day. HeBrews Coffee grew from 40 daily customers to more than 130 and expanded to three locations. A charter bus company that had 40 coaches now runs 102, with drivers on the Meta site earning over $80,000 per year in a region where the median income is $42,000.

Meta also donated $5 million to Louisiana Delta Community College to create scholarships for data-center-related training programs. All Richland Parish high school graduates starting with the class of 2026 are eligible for full scholarships for any data center trade certificate or course at the college.

The expansion has not been without friction. Some Holly Ridge residents have complained about construction traffic and rising property costs. Environmental groups including the Sierra Club have criticized the project’s reliance on natural gas and questioned Meta’s promises of 100% renewable energy matching. Entergy has consistently denied that the facility will strain the local power grid, though some outages have been reported since construction began.

For now, Meta shows no signs of slowing down. The company is planning several “titan clusters” like Hyperion as it races toward what Zuckerberg has described as the inevitable emergence of AI superintelligence. Whether or not that prediction holds, the Hyperion data center is already rewriting the economic map of a small corner of Louisiana.