Meta's planned Louisiana AI data center to cost $50 billion, Trump says

Aug 26 (Reuters) - Meta's META.O planned AI data center in Louisiana will cost $50 billion, President Donald Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The social media company is building its largest data center in Richland Parish, which could handle intense computational power to support digital infrastructure, including artificial intelligence workloads.

The Facebook and Instagram parent declined to comment when asked about Trump's remarks about the data center.

Meta has tapped U.S. bond giant PIMCO and alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital OWL.N to spearhead a $29 billion financing for its data center expansion in rural Louisiana, Reuters reported earlier this month.

The company announced last year that it would spend over $10 billion to set up the data center.

Meta reorganized its AI efforts under Superintelligence Labs in June, a high-stakes push that followed senior staff departures and lukewarm reception to its latest open-source Llama 4 model.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers for Superintelligence, intensifying his pursuit of a technology he has chased with a talent war for top engineers.