Meta Platforms announced that it plans to invest $1.5 billion in a Texas data center, marking the commencement of construction on its 29th facility worldwide as the social media giant enhances infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads.

The data center located in El Paso, Meta's third facility in Texas, is slated to begin operations in 2028 and has the capacity to expand to a 1-gigawatt site—sufficient energy to supply a city like San Francisco for one day—positioning it among the largest proposed data center campuses in the US.

Major cloud service providers, referred to as hyperscalers, are competing to establish AI infrastructure, with Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft expected to invest over $360 billion in 2025, based on company reports.

The majority of the investment is anticipated to be directed towards energizing data centers.

Meta stated that the new facility is anticipated to generate around 100 jobs when it begins operations, with more than 1,800 construction workers expected to be on-site during peak construction. The firm mentioned El Paso's strong electrical infrastructure and talented labor force as reasons for choosing the location.

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Meta has put in excess of $10 billion in Texas and has over 2,500 employees throughout the state, according to the company. These numbers encompass the most recent investment.

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The firm is investing $1.5 billion of its own capital to finance the ongoing stage of the El Paso location. Wednesday's announcement comes after Meta's recent $29 billion off-balance-sheet agreement with Pimco and Blue Owl to finance a data center campus in Louisiana

"The quickest gazelle identifies its position, and the rest follow; I believe Meta is the fastest gazelle in the industry," says Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, a regional economic development and policy advocacy organization involved in supporting the project.

 

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Others have examined the area, additional data centers, and we anticipate that there will likely be others interested in pursuing this.

Barela mentioned that the Meta initiative originated from a recommendation from the office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott around four years ago, and El Paso provided a collection of tax incentives and additional strategies to entice the company.