Meta Breaks Ground on 1GW Data Center Campus in Texas

Social media giant Meta this week announced work had started on the 1GW site, the company’s 29th data center. Some $1.5 billion is set to be invested in the first phase of development. The site has been designed to support “both the traditional servers of today and future generations of AI-enabled hardware,” and will use a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that will use zero water for the “majority of the year.”

“This will be a powerhouse data center optimized to support our growing AI workloads and will be essential to bringing our technologies to life,” Meta said. “An example of industry-leading infrastructure, this data center can scale to 1GW and represents a pivotal moment as we invest in our AI work.”

The land, north of Stan Roberts Sr. Ave. and west of US Highway 54, was previously acquired by the city from the El Paso Public Service Board more than a decade ago. It was originally set aside as a possible site for an automotive manufacturing project that never materialized. There was more talk of a potential manufacturing user for the site around 2019, but nothing came to fruition.