Meta is expanding its planned artificial intelligence data center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, into a 5-gigawatt development backed by more than $50 billion in total investment. The facility, named Hyperion, represents the largest single data center development in the company’s global network and is designed to provide massive compute resources for Meta’s next-generation artificial intelligence models.
The revised plans significantly scale up the rural Louisiana project. Meta first announced the Richland Parish site in December 2024 as a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot buildout rated for 2 gigawatts. In October 2025, Meta formed a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital that valued the campus at $27 billion. Under the updated scope, the campus will cover nearly 10 million square feet. According to company timelines, Hyperion is scheduled to reach 2 gigawatts of capacity by 2030, with the full 5-gigawatt deployment slated for completion around 2032.
Power Infrastructure and Utility Partnerships
Running a 5-gigawatt computing campus requires power on the scale of major industrial hubs. To secure the required electricity without raising rates for local residents, Meta partnered with utility provider Entergy Louisiana on a dedicated generation plan.
The energy plan includes:
- The construction of seven new natural gas-fired power plants.
- Installation of three grid-scale battery storage installations.
- Capacity upgrades, or uprates, at existing regional nuclear stations.
- Procurement of up to 2.5 gigawatts of clean and renewable generation.
Meta stated that it will pay the full cost of the power generation and transmission updates it requires. The companies project that the commercial arrangement will generate approximately $2.65 billion in net savings for Entergy Louisiana ratepayers over a 20-year span. Meta also committed $215 million toward Entergy’s customer affordability and energy efficiency programs.
On the environmental side, the campus aims for LEED Gold certification and relies on closed-loop liquid systems alongside dry cooling to minimize water consumption. Meta has also funded regional wetland initiatives, including collaborations with Ducks Unlimited and the Flyaway Forest program across the Mississippi Alluvial Valley.
Economic Footprint and Community Funding
The expansion is driving substantial economic activity in northeast Louisiana. Meta reported that contractors have already awarded more than $1.6 billion in work to local Louisiana firms since breaking ground in late 2024. Three general contracting firms-Turner Construction Company, Mortenson Construction, and DPR Construction-are managing the project.
At the peak of building activity, the site will employ roughly 7,500 construction workers. Once operational, the supercluster will maintain a permanent workforce of about 1,000 staff members, including electrical technicians, network engineers, cooling experts, and security staff.
Meta is also investing more than $1 billion directly into municipal infrastructure upgrades surrounding the site, focusing on roads, potable water distribution, and regional wastewater treatment. In education, the company provided a $5 million gift to Louisiana Delta Community College-the largest donation in the school’s history-to fund full trade scholarships for local high school graduates entering data center maintenance and construction programs starting with the class of 2026. The influx of early tax revenue from the project has already boosted the area, allowing Richland Parish public schools to raise local teacher bonus payments by 400 percent.
Engineering Lessons and the Hyperscaler AI Race
The engineering layout of Hyperion incorporates methods Meta tested at Prometheus, its 1-gigawatt AI supercluster in New Albany, Ohio. In Ohio, Meta accelerated building schedules by 70 to 80 percent by deploying temporary 30-megawatt weather-resistant enclosures to house compute clusters while permanent structures were finished.
The Louisiana site will support Meta Superintelligence Labs, the division directed by Alexandr Wang, as the company prepares hardware for ever-larger AI training workloads. Meta’s push matches similar capital spending drives by competitors such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, all of which are constructing multi-gigawatt facilities across states offering favorable utility and tax conditions.
Louisiana officials aggressively recruited the tech company. In late 2024, Governor Jeff Landry signed legislation creating a 20-year sales tax exemption for qualifying data center equipment installed before 2029, paired with state job incentives to secure the multi-billion-dollar project.
