META: Meta Stock Flat as Tech Giant Announces Its Biggest Data Center at $10 Billion

Things just got even more serious for Big Tech’s AI ambitions — Meta’s $10 billion data center aims to beef up its infrastructure and expand AI workloads.

• Meta stock META stayed flat Wednesday after the company announced its plans to build a $10 billion data center in Louisiana. The Facebook parent seeks to cover 4 million square feet (~370,000 square meters) of industrial area in Richland Parish. All that real estate will be covered by infrastructure that will handle gargantuan amounts of workload required to process artificial intelligence data.
• The site will be powered by three new natural gas plants with 2.2 gigawatts of combined capacity, according to Entergy, the utility that has partnered with Meta for the construction work. That level of power is enough to support more than one million households. What’s more, Meta is exploring plans to use nuclear energy to power its network of data centers but that’s a far-sighted goal — it won’t be possible at least until the mid-2030s.
• Meta has been pushing fiercely to stay in the lead for AI as Big Tech is injecting hundreds of billions in the novel technology. But with that lofty ambition — hyperscaler data center — Meta projects it will need about 5 to 7 years to complete the site work. Quick fact: Tesla’s Shanghai factory of fairly identical size (4.5 million feet) was completed in 168 days back in 2019.