Meta is constructing a 5GW AI data center to support its internal AI and foundation model development.
Meta is currently building a data center called Hyperion, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced will supply the company's new AI lab with five gigawatts (GW) of computational power. According to Meta spokesperson Ashley Gabriel, Hyperion will be located in Louisiana, likely in Richland Parish where Meta previously announced a $10 billion data center development. Gabriel stated that Meta plans to bring two gigawatts of data center capacity online by 2030 with Hyperion, with the facility scaling to five gigawatts in several years. Hyperion's footprint will be large enough to cover most of Manhattan.
In addition to Hyperion, Meta plans to bring a 1 GW super cluster called Prometheus online in 2026, making it one of the first tech companies to control an AI data center of this size. Prometheus is located in New Albany, Ohio. This expansion reflects Meta's strategy to compete with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic in the race to train and serve leading AI models. The company has also bolstered its capabilities by recruiting top talent, including former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and former Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross to run Meta Superintelligence Lab.
Together, Prometheus and Hyperion will require enough energy to power millions of homes, pulling significant amounts of electricity and water from neighboring communities. Meta's data center project in Newton County, Georgia has already caused water taps to run dry in some residents' homes, according to The New York Times. Similar concerns extend across the industry, with AI hyperscaler CoreWeave planning a data center expansion projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, Texas. Other major efforts include OpenAI's Stargate project with Oracle and SoftBank, as well as xAI's Colossus supercomputer.
The Trump administration has championed the tech industry's data center buildout. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright wrote in The Economist that the U.S. should "lead the next major energy-intensive frontier: artificial intelligence," noting that AI transforms electricity into the "most valuable output imaginable: intelligence." Wright stated that the federal government would accelerate energy production derived from coal, nuclear, geothermal, and natural gas.
With federal support, data centers are poised to consume massive amounts of America's energy. Experts estimate that data centers could account for 20% of America's energy consumption by 2030, up from just 2.5% in 2022. Without rapidly increased energy production, this surge could create significant problems for communities surrounding these facilities.