Meta’s Texas-Sized Brain: 1 GW El Paso Mega-Facility to Train the Next Gen of AI

Meta’s Texas-Sized Brain: 1 GW El Paso Mega-Facility to Train the Next Gen of AI

Ground has broken on Meta’s 29th global data hall—and its third in Texas—a liquid-cooled, AI-first site that can eventually draw a full gigawatt, enough to power 750,000 homes, while pledging to give back twice the water it drinks.

From desert dust to AI muscle

The first US$1.5 bn phase will employ 1,800 construction workers at peak and 100 full-time staff when switches are flipped. Designed as a “compute chameleon,” the shell will house both traditional x86 racks and undisclosed next-gen accelerators for training and inference, letting Meta swap hardware as algorithms evolve.

Why El Paso?

Rachel Peterson, VP of Data Centres, cites three magnets: abundant renewable power from West Texas wind and solar, low-latency fibre routes to Meta’s Los Lunas, NM, campus, and a bilingual talent pool graduating from UTEP’s computer-engineering programme. Governor Greg Abbott calls the deal “another stake in the ground proving Texas is the AI capital of America.”

Sustainability baked in

The hall is engineered for LEED Gold: closed-loop liquid cooling means zero potable-water burn for nine months of the year, while a new 230 kV line financed by El Paso Electric will carry 100 % matched renewable electrons. Through partnerships with DigDeep and the Texas Water Action Collaborative, Meta will restore 200 % of annual consumption to the Rio Grande basin, part of its company-wide “water positive by 2030” vow.

Community dividend

Beyond tax rolls, Meta is importing its Community Accelerator—micro-grants and digital-skills bootcamps for 250 local SMEs—and will launch Community Action Grants in 2026 to fund STEM programmes and small-business tech adoption. Total Texas investment now tops US$10 bn with 2,500 permanent employees.

The bigger picture

With Llama-4 training runs already pushing exascale thresholds, Meta needs domestic capacity it can scale in 100 MW increments. El Paso’s 1 GW pad gives headroom for a decade of parameter growth without rerouting fibre or negotiating new substations. In short, the desert plot is a strategic insurance policy on Mark Zuckerberg’s bet that personal super-intelligence will live in the cloud—and that cloud will sit in Texas.