Meta picked up roughly 1,039 acres of land in Northeast El Paso, Texas, for approximately $8.5 million. That’s about $8,156 per acre. The purpose: building a massive data center campus designed to scale up to 1 gigawatt of capacity, fueled by dedicated natural gas power generation.
The project started with a $1.5 billion budget when it was first disclosed in 2024. That number has since ballooned past $10 billion in total projected investment.
What Meta is actually building
The El Paso campus is designed around a 1 GW scalable infrastructure. Meta has proposed a dedicated 366 MW natural gas power plant to supply the facility, with cost estimates ranging from $473 million to $551.8 million just for the energy component.
Groundbreaking is slated for October 2025, with active construction kicking off in 2026. During the build-out phase, the project is expected to create around 1,800 construction jobs. Once operational, the campus will support approximately 100 permanent positions.
