Meta has broken ground on a 1 gigawatt (GW) data centre campus in Lebanon, Indiana, marking an investment of more than $10 billion in infrastructure and the surrounding community. The company said the facility is one of its largest infrastructure investments to date.
Once operational, the Lebanon site, Meta’s second data centre in Indiana, will deliver 1 GW of capacity. The company said the campus will support both AI workloads and its core products.
“As AI advances and compute demands continue to grow, gigawatt sites like this one will be critical to advancing the technology that supports our core business as well as our AI ambitions,” the company said in a statement. “Building at this scale creates the flexibility to support both goals while enabling technology with higher bandwidth, lower latency, and improved reliability.”
At peak construction, the project is expected to support more than 4,000 construction jobs and about 300 operational roles. Meta said it is launching a Boone County-wide workforce development programme through the Boone County Career Collaborative to support career exploration and work-based learning across three school districts. “By connecting schools with local employers, it will ensure students have consistent, meaningful exposure to new skills and career paths,” the company said.
Meta said it will provide $1 million annually for 20 years to the Boone REMC Community Fund to assist residents with energy bills and fund emergency water utility assistance through The Caring Center. The company said it will pay the full cost of energy, water and wastewater services required for the data centre.
Over the course of the project, Meta said it will invest more than $120 million in water infrastructure in Lebanon, along with spending on roads, transmission lines and utility upgrades. The company also plans to introduce its Community Action Grants programme in Boone County to provide funding to schools and nonprofits.
The company said it will match 100% of the data centre’s energy use with clean energy and pursue LEED Gold certification. The facility will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system that recirculates water and will use zero water for most of the year. Meta said it will restore 100% of the water it consumes at the site to local watersheds.
Meta plans to invest up to $600 billion over the next three years (through 2028) in US AI data centres and related infrastructure, with 2026 capex potentially reaching $135 billion. The company’s broader US expansion includes the 5 GW Hyperion project in Richland Parish, Louisiana, with an initial 2 GW planned by 2030, and the 1 GW Prometheus supercluster in New Albany, Ohio, which is expected to come online in 2026.
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