Meta Platforms Inc. officially broke ground today, April 24, 2026, on its newest data center campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The facility, representing a $1 billion capital investment, is the first in the region designed from the ground up to support the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. This project is a central pillar of Meta’s long-term strategy to scale its global AI capabilities, which involves a projected $600 billion in total infrastructure spending over the coming years.
The Tulsa facility will span approximately 900,000 square feet and will be optimized for AI-specific hardware, including the third generation of Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA v3) chips and high-density GPU clusters. Unlike traditional data centers, this site will feature advanced liquid-cooling systems designed to manage the significant thermal output of AI-optimized servers. Meta officials stated that the facility will be powered by 100% renewable energy, supported by new wind and solar projects integrated into the local grid through partnerships with Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO).
Construction is expected to take approximately 24 to 30 months, with the first phase of the data center projected to come online by late 2028. At peak construction, the project will employ over 1,500 workers. Once operational, the facility will support roughly 100 permanent high-tech roles, including data center technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and security personnel. The Tulsa site joins Meta’s global network of 25 data center locations, further decentralizing its compute capacity to improve latency for its suite of applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which collectively serve over 3.9 billion monthly active users.
During the groundbreaking ceremony, Meta’s Director of Data Center Strategy noted that the Tulsa site is specifically engineered to handle the massive computational demands of generative AI models and large-scale recommendation engines. The facility will utilize a modular design, allowing for rapid hardware refreshes as AI technology evolves. This investment follows the company’s recent updates to its data center architecture, which prioritize flexibility and energy efficiency to meet the power-intensive requirements of training trillion-parameter models.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum joined Meta executives for the event. The state provided a package of tax incentives under the Quality Jobs Program, while the city of Tulsa committed to infrastructure improvements surrounding the site, located in the Port of Catoosa industrial area. Meta also announced a $250,000 community grant program for local STEM education as part of its initial entry into the Oklahoma market.