A team of Turner Construction Company, DPR Construction, and MA Mortenson have been contracted to build the biggest data centre yet for Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
Meta is investing $10bn in the custom-designed, 4 million sq ft campus to stay abreast of developments in artificial intelligence. In operation, it will employ around 500 people.
Meta will also spend around $200m on local infrastructure improvements.
Turner said the construction project would employ around 5,000 people.
Powering the data centre will entail a project of its own.
Meta’s energy partner, Entergy Louisiana, will build three combined-cycle combustion turbines with a combined capacity of 2.26GW (two of which will be in Richland Parish), eight substations, and nearly 100 miles of 500kV transmission lines by 2029.
The new generators’ fuel will be 30% hydrogen at first, with plans to move to 100% hydrogen at some point later.
Meta and Entergy are also mulling nuclear power for data centres in the future.
Turner said the contracting team will hold information fairs in early 2025 for workers and contractors.
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