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BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Meta is dramatically expanding its Hyperion data center project in rural Richland Parish, lifting the planned investment to more than $50 billion and increasing the facility’s capacity to 5GW, the company said in a blog post on Monday. The site, which began construction in December 2024, is set to become Meta’s largest data center and a central pillar of its multihundred-billion-dollar artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout. The latest cost estimate far exceeds the roughly $10 billion initial projection and the $27 billion figure disclosed in October, when Meta and Blue Owl Capital formed a joint venture for the original 2GW phase of the project. Unlike traditional facilities, the Hyperion supercluster is designed around dense deployments of graphics processing units and other advanced hardware optimized for AI workloads. BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — The expansion comes as Louisiana deploys generous incentives to attract hyperscale data center investments. In late 2024, Republican Governor Jeff Landry signed into law a 20-year sales tax exemption for data centers built before 2029, part of a broader effort to lure Meta to the state, and he is scheduled to host a press event on Monday in Baton Rouge. Meta said it pays the full costs of the energy, water and related infrastructure used by the facility so local consumers do not shoulder those expenses. The company added that it has already awarded more than $1.6 billion in contracts to local businesses since construction began and plans to invest over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems. A Meta spokesperson told CNBC the project is expected to reach 2GW of capacity by 2030, with no timeline set for the full 5GW buildout.

Prepared by Christopher Adams and reviewed by editorial team.