Meta is planning a 1GW data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, Canada.The company revealed plans for its first Canadian data center on July 6 in an announcement alongside Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith and Alberta government officials.The social media giant is expecting to invest CA$13 billion (US$9.17bn) in the project, which could be scaled up to 1.8GW of capacity.The data center will have a closed-loop liquid cooling system. The project will support 3,000 construction jobs, and 300 operational jobs once online.The data center will be Meta's 33rd facility globally.In a LinkedIn post, Meta's vice president of data centers, Rachel Peterson, said: "We selected Sturgeon County for its access to energy and infrastructure, strong talent base, and a great set of community partners committed to working with us to move this project forward."Peterson added: "We're fully funding new generation and grid infrastructure in Alberta, which improves the reliability for all consumers. We're grateful for the partnership of Greenlight Limited Partnership, AltaLink, Capital Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator. And we'll continue to match this facility's electricity use with 100 percent clean and renewable energy."According to a release from the Alberta government, Meta is investing around CA$60 million (US$42.3m) in local infrastructure improvements.The company is also working on Project Greenlight with Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, and Kineticor, which is a CA$4.6 billion (US$3.24bn) 970MW natural gas-fired electricity generation facility.Alberta Premier Smith said of the upcoming data center: “Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy, and Alberta is making sure we lead rather than follow. We created the right conditions to attract world-leading investments while protecting the interests of Albertans. This project will create thousands of jobs, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, and make electricity more reliable and affordable.”The news of Meta building in Canada comes just a week after reports emerged that Meta was looking to build a cloud business to sell access to its excess AI compute self-made models.The company is currently projecting capex expectations for this year of between US$120bn and US$135bn, and at the start of this year established a new division dedicated to growing its data center capacity, dubbed "Meta Compute," which Zuckerberg said was "planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time."This is one of several gigawatt-scale data center campuses proposed in Alberta. In January 2026, Synapse Data Center Inc. proposed a 1GW data center development comprised of ten 100MW buildings and some two million sq ft (185,805 sqm) of space.