Meta Expands Beyond U.S. Borders With Massive C$13 Billion Alberta AI Data Center
Meta Technologies is moving ahead with its relentless AI buildout to the North. Transitioning from building out infrastructure in its domestic facilities, the tech company is now officially breaking ground on its very first data center to be located in Canada.
Built in the Alberta province in the Sturgeon County region, the massive project comes with an unprecedented investment worth C$13 billion ($9.17 billion). The new state-of-the-art facility has been built to deliver 1 gigawatt of power to start off with, and with the potential capacity to increase that figure to 1.8 gigawatts to process sophisticated machine learning models.
The facility will be the powerhouse driving the next wave of AI innovation that will be employed in the wide array of applications developed by Meta, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
In order to integrate the massive facility, Meta is pumping C$60 million into local infrastructure and providing local community grants. The long-term project will create around 3,000 jobs during its buildout phase and 300 permanent positions thereafter.
Energy sustainability is at the core of such a buildout. Though initially powered by the natural gas from Alberta, where 250 megawatts of power will be sourced initially from Capital Power and eventually from Pembina Pipeline in a tolling arrangement by 2030, Meta has guaranteed that all its grid consumption will be matched 100% by renewables in the form of renewable energy credits.
On top of that, the facility will employ an innovative closed-loop liquid cooling technology, thereby achieving zero water usage in its operations. Such massive construction in Canada represents the intention on the part of mega-cap tech platforms to have the necessary infrastructure in place locally to enable them to dominate the AI world of tomorrow.
