Meta $10B Indiana Data Center, 1gw for AI

Overview:

Meta has started building a 1-GW data center campus in Lebanon, Indiana - a $10B+ bet to power its AI work. A gigawatt (1 GW) is 1,000 megawatts (MW). Most data centers run in the tens to low hundreds of MW, so this project is a different league. The company has not announced a public go-live date yet. (Source: about.fb.com announcement)

Key details:

• The site is being built to support about 4,000 construction jobs and roughly 300 ongoing operations roles.
• Meta says it will match 100% of the site's electricity with clean energy.
• The project targets LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council - LEED is a rating for energy, water, materials, and other green building practices.
• The campus will use liquid cooling. That means chilled liquid runs through racks to move heat away from servers; Meta says the system recirculates the same water and should require zero fresh water for most of the year.

Community and utilities:

Meta is trying to avoid common local objections by shouldering costs and investing in the area well before the site is operational. The company says it pays the full costs for energy used by its data centers and works years in advance with utilities so residents are not negatively affected. It will also pay full water and wastewater costs. (Source: about.fb.com announcement)

Community commitments:

• $1 million per year for 20 years to the Boone REMC Community Fund (Boone REMC is the local rural electric cooperative).
• Funding for emergency water-bill assistance via The Caring Center, a local nonprofit.
• More than $120 million in upgrades to Lebanon water infrastructure.
• Launching the Boone County Career Collaborative, which will provide work-based learning across three school districts.
• Extending Meta's Community Action Grants to Boone County.

Bigger picture:

Lebanon is part of Meta's push to build multiple gigawatt-scale AI campuses. Prometheus, a 1+ GW site in New Albany, Ohio, is expected to be among the first 1-GW AI "superclusters" to come online in 2026. Hyperion, planned in Richland Parish, Louisiana, is designed to scale to multiple gigawatts and eventually reach about 5 GW. These projects follow Mark Zuckerberg's July 14, 2025 pledge to invest heavily in AI infrastructure. (Source: TechCrunch)

Why founders should care:

• Power is the new platform. Start lining up multi-year power deals, redundancy, and sites with real transmission capacity rather than promises. Plan for liquid cooling and high-density racks.
• Permitting is a product. The playbook is clear: do utility pre-work, cover infrastructure costs up front, and invest locally through grants and workforce programs to speed approvals.

Bottom line: Meta's Lebanon campus shows how AI infrastructure is scaling up in size and local impact. If you build or design systems that depend on large compute, start planning now for how power, cooling, and community relations will shape your options.