Meta Raises Texas AI Data Center to Over $10 Billion

Meta has dramatically scaled up its AI data center investment in El Paso, Texas. What began as a $1.5 billion project now carries a price tag exceeding $10 billion, with a capacity target of one gigawatt — one of the largest single data center investments in history.

The announcement came on March 27, 2026, illustrating the enormous race for AI infrastructure currently underway in the United States. The same day, Microsoft announced it was taking over an expansion project in Abilene, Texas, after OpenAI stepped back. The two new "AI factory" buildings Microsoft is constructing will bring total capacity in the Abilene cluster to 2.1 gigawatts.

Meta's El Paso investment is part of a broader capital commitment. The company has pledged between $65 and $72 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, with the majority directed toward AI infrastructure.

There's a shadow to the news, however. The energy consumption from these facilities is putting Big Tech's climate goals under severe pressure. The data centers are energy-intensive, and the growing demand raises concerns about increased dependence on fossil fuels.

Microsoft's Abilene project includes its own power plant with 900 megawatts of capacity — far more than the 350 megawatts tied to the existing OpenAI/Oracle project on the same campus.

For enterprise technology leaders, this is relevant context: pricing for cloud AI services is directly influenced by capacity and energy costs. When three of the world's largest tech companies are building out gigawatt-scale infrastructure simultaneously, it will shape the availability and pricing of the AI services we use daily.