Meta plans $200 billion AI data center in Louisiana powered by 10 new natural gas plants

Meta’s plan to build a massive artificial intelligence data center in rural Louisiana is shaping up to be one of the largest private industrial projects in the state’s history, with the company now saying the campus could cost $200 billion and require enormous new power infrastructure. The project, in Richland Parish in northeast Louisiana, has become a major test of how far state leaders are willing to go to land a marquee tech investment and whether local residents will see enough long-term benefits in return.

According to Bloomberg, the deal took extensive negotiation and a degree of secrecy before Louisiana was chosen as the site for Meta’s biggest data center yet. The project is being presented by Meta as a centerpiece of its push into AI, and the company says the Richland Parish campus will be its largest data center complex to date. Bloomberg’s reporting says the facility is part of a broader effort by Meta to expand the computing power needed for artificial intelligence, while Louisiana leaders were eager to secure the investment and the jobs that could come with it.

The scale of the project is striking even by the standards of the data center boom. Bloomberg and the related reporting say the campus could demand up to 7.5 gigawatts of total power, including 5 gigawatts for computing, and would be backed by new natural gas plants built to supply that load. The YouTube report cited in the search results says the development is expected to be fueled by 10 newly constructed natural gas plants, underscoring the immense energy needs of AI infrastructure and the environmental and utility questions that come with it.

Meta has also framed the project as a major economic win for Louisiana. The company says the Richland Parish site will bring a large construction effort and long-term employment, while Louisiana’s economic development rules require data center projects to meet spending and job thresholds to qualify for incentives. The search results indicate that Meta pushed for a tax exemption on expensive equipment such as GPUs, and that the company promised 300 jobs at pay levels above the state average, with the possibility of reaching 500 jobs to secure the full incentive package.

For local communities, the promise of new investment sits alongside uncertainty about how much of the wealth generated by the project will stay in the region. Bloomberg’s podcast summary highlights the central question: whether residents of a struggling rural community will truly reap the benefits of a new neighbor of this size. That issue matters because projects like this can transform local tax bases, energy demand, housing markets, and road systems, but they can also concentrate ownership and profits far from the people living next to the facility.

The financing structure has also drawn attention. The reporting in the search results says Meta arranged a joint venture that leaves it with only a 20% stake in the campus while a private capital firm, Blue Owl, holds the rest, with $27 billion in debt backed by asset managers including PIMCO. That approach keeps debt off Meta’s balance sheet while allowing the company to control day-to-day operations, illustrating how large tech firms are increasingly using complex financing to build AI infrastructure without taking on the full cost directly.

The Louisiana project reflects a broader global race to build AI-ready data centers. A separate TechCrunch report in the source set says Australian operator AirTrunk is committing $30 billion to build 5 gigawatts of AI data centers in India, showing that the push for massive computing capacity is not limited to the United States. In Louisiana, the Meta deal stands out because of its scale, its reliance on new power plants, and the political effort required to land it, all of which make the project a bellwether for how states may compete for the next generation of AI infrastructure.