Meta has sharply increased its El Paso, Texas, data center commitment from an initial $1.5 billion to more than $10 billion, turning the site into a much bigger part of its AI infrastructure push. The company says the facility will scale to one gigawatt and open in 2028, showing how aggressively Big Tech is spending to secure compute for next-generation AI products.
TL;DR
- Meta has raised its El Paso AI data center investment from $1.5 billion to more than $10 billion
- The campus is expected to scale to 1GW by 2028
- Meta says the project will support more than 300 operational jobs and over 4,000 construction jobs at peak
- The expansion comes amid local questions around power, water use, emissions, and community transparency
Meta Expands Its AI Infrastructure Ambitions
Meta’s larger El Paso commitment is not just about one facility, it reflects the company’s wider race to secure enough infrastructure for AI models, assistants, recommendation systems, and future superintelligence efforts.
The investment has climbed to $10 billion, while Meta confirmed the campus will scale, making it one of the company’s most important AI-focused projects in the United States.
The site will become Meta’s 29th data center globally and its third in Texas. That gives El Paso a more strategic role in Meta’s next growth phase, especially as AI infrastructure has become a core battleground for the largest technology companies.
Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft are together expected to spend more than $630 billion this year on AI infrastructure.
What Meta Says El Paso Will Gain?
The scale-up also changes the local economic pitch. Meta now says the completed site will support more than 300 jobs, while peak construction demand has risen to over 4,000 workers.
That is up from the initial phase announced in October 2025, when Meta said the project would support around 100 operational jobs and 1,800 construction jobs at peak.
Meta also said it is putting $500,000 into workforce development in partnership with El Paso Public Schools, and that it has spent more than $8 million on local infrastructure improvements.
The company is also highlighting community initiatives tied to water access and utility bill support as it tries to position the project as a long-term economic benefit for the region.
Topics for more insights:
- Welcome To The Future: Metaverse
- The Top 5 Applications Of Artificial Intelligence For Data Centers
- How To Use Meta AI For Image Generation
How This Fits Meta’s Spending Surge?
The El Paso expansion aligns with Meta’s broader infrastructure spending wave. In its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, Meta said it spent $72.22 billion in capital expenditures in 2025 and expects 2026 capex to reach between $115 billion and $135 billion, driven by infrastructure expansion and Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We had strong business performance in 2025,” and added that he was “looking forward to advancing personal superintelligence” in 2026. Those remarks make it clear that the El Paso project is part of a much broader bet on AI capacity, not a standalone regional investment.
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