Meta plans $9 billion Alberta data center

Meta plans to build a $9 billion data center in Alberta, western Canada, the company said Wednesday, in a project local officials described as one of the largest private-sector investments in Canadian history.

Gary Demasi, Meta's vice president for data center development, announced the plan in Calgary alongside Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. He said the facility would be Meta's largest outside the United States.

The planned site in Sturgeon County is set to cover 2.9 million square feet, or 269,419 square meters. Smith said it would support several thousand Canadian jobs and generate about $175 million a year in benefits for Albertans.

Smith said Alberta offered affordable electricity, flexible power generation, a cooler climate and a skilled workforce. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is spending heavily on artificial intelligence, which requires data centers to run.

The project comes as data-center construction faces growing criticism over electricity use, water use, noise and the limited number of jobs some facilities create. New York state's legislature last month passed a one-year moratorium on data-center construction, while a similar measure in Maine was vetoed by the state's governor.