Overview
- Meta announced Monday that its Hyperion campus in Richland Parish will grow to 5 gigawatts of compute and that the company expects the project to cost more than $50 billion, up from an initial $10 billion plan.
- The company says it will pay the full cost of energy, water and related infrastructure for the site and that an agreement with Entergy Louisiana will fund new generation, transmission and batteries while projecting roughly $2 billion in customer savings over 20 years.
- Meta tied the expansion to local economic promises including more than $1.6 billion in contracts awarded to Louisiana businesses, over $1 billion in infrastructure spending, $5 million in community college scholarships, and projections of about 7,500 peak construction jobs and 1,000 permanent roles.
- The project’s financing still rests on the October joint venture with Blue Owl Capital that valued buildings and infrastructure at about $27 billion, and Bloomberg has reported an unconfirmed figure near $250 billion for total investment that Meta has not corroborated.
- State tax breaks and the scale of the build have prompted calls for greater regulatory review from consumer and environmental groups, who cite risks to the power grid, water supplies, long-term tax revenue and local housing and services.