Meta plans two AI supercenters of up to 5 gigawatts

Meta has put numbers on the infrastructure it plans to use to compete in the race for advanced AI. Mark Zuckerberg has announced Prometheus, a 1-gigawatt supercluster expected to come online in Ohio in 2026, and Hyperion, a massive data center complex in Louisiana that could scale to 5 GW over the next several years.

The scale is no mere technical detail. One gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts of electrical power—a level associated with major industrial facilities and, in some cases, a power plant. Meta wants to turn that energy into the computing capacity needed to train and run its next generation of AI models.

Prometheus will arrive in 2026; Hyperion will scale up later

Prometheus will be located in New Albany, Ohio, and Meta expects it to reach 1 GW of capacity in 2026. Zuckerberg has described it as one of the first AI data centers of that scale controlled by a technology company.

The more ambitious project is Hyperion. It will be located in Louisiana, likely in Richland Parish, where Meta had already announced a $10 billion investment to build a data center. The company expects to bring 2 GW of capacity online there by 2030 and eventually expand the complex to 5 GW.

Zuckerberg has said the site will occupy a substantial portion of an area comparable in size to Manhattan. The comparison illustrates the plan’s physical scale, but it is important to distinguish that from the announced power capacity: Hyperion will not have 5 GW when it opens. That is the upper limit of an expansion planned over several years.

The investment also goes beyond any specific figure for these two projects. The CEO has written that Meta will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in computing capacity to build superintelligence, the term the company uses for systems that would vastly exceed human abilities across many tasks. That is an investment commitment, not a finalized budget for Hyperion and Prometheus.

Computing power becomes a competitive advantage

Frontier AI models require enormous clusters of chips, high-speed networks, storage systems and cooling. This combination is commonly called a cluster; when it reaches exceptional scale, companies refer to it as a supercluster.

Meta is not starting from scratch. The company already develops the open Llama model family and operates one of the industry’s largest data center infrastructures. But its announcement follows a campaign to strengthen Meta Superintelligence Labs, its new advanced AI division. In recent weeks, it hired Alexandr Wang, formerly CEO of Scale AI, and Daniel Gross, co-founder of Safe Superintelligence.

The logic is straightforward: hiring top researchers is easier if they can work with the computing capacity they need. OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic also depend on ever-growing computing resources, while xAI has developed its Colossus supercomputer and OpenAI is advancing Stargate with Oracle and SoftBank.

This race is changing how the strength of an AI company is measured. Publishing a competitive model is no longer enough: companies must be able to train the next generation and serve it to millions of people without computing costs spiraling out of control.

Electricity and water become part of the AI debate

The other side of these announcements is energy. A data center spanning several gigawatts consumes an amount of electricity comparable to that used by a major urban area. It also needs grid infrastructure, available generation capacity and cooling systems that can require large volumes of water.

The pressure is already visible in some U.S. communities. The New York Times reported Monday that a Meta project in Newton County, Georgia, has coincided with water-supply problems in nearby homes. That alone does not prove all data centers will have the same effect, but it does foreshadow the kind of local conflict facilities of this scale can trigger.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimated in late 2024 that data centers could account for between 6.7% and 12% of national electricity consumption in 2028, up from 2.5% in 2022. AI is one reason for that increase, alongside the expansion of cloud computing.

The Trump administration has backed the rollout of AI infrastructure and supports expanding power generation through sources including nuclear, natural gas, geothermal energy and coal. For Meta, securing energy will be as critical as buying chips. For Louisiana and Ohio, the question will be under what conditions that investment arrives: who pays for grid upgrades, where the electricity comes from and how communities’ access to water is protected.

Prometheus will be the first tangible test in 2026. Hyperion represents a larger ambition: a single Meta complex that could grow to a level requiring AI to be planned as a matter of industrial and energy policy, not just software.