Meta Plans Data Center the Size of Manhattan

Meta harbors data center ambitions the size of one of the world’s most densely populated islands: Manhattan.

On Monday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was building a data center to supply its AI lab with five gigawatts of computational power, TechCrunch reported. Hyperion, as the center’s been dubbed, is expected to be large enough to cover most of Manhattan.

It won’t be in Manhattan, of course. Hyperion is set to be developed in Louisiana. Most likely, it will be in Richland Parish, where Meta earlier announced a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot data center project.

Hyperion is expected to be ready to provide a portion of its eventual computational power by 2030.

Meta also has a one-gigawatt “super cluster” coming online next year in New Albany, Ohio.

The AI push comes as data centers face increasing scrutiny for their environmental impact and the impact on local communities near the facilities. A Meta data center project in Georgia is causing issues for residents of Newton County, some of whom have seen their taps run dry as the development sucks away water and electricity, according to the New York Times.

At the start of the year, Meta disclosed that its capital expenditures for 2025 were expected to range from $60 billion to $65 billion, according to a Facebook post from Zuckerberg. That’s a sizable jump from the nearly $40 billion the company spent last year.

Much of that estimated capital expenditure budget was expected to go towards building and expanding data centers. In 2022, Meta unveiled plans for an $800 million data center in Central Texas set to span nearly 400 acres and 900,000 square feet.

Data centers are estimated to account for 20 percent of the country’s energy consumption by the end of the decade, up from 2.5 percent in 2022, according to industry experts.

— Holden Walter-Warner