Meta Platforms Inc. will invest around $10 billion to build its first data center in Canada as the company expands its infrastructure to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
The Sturgeon County, Alberta-based data center will have one gigawatt of power capacity — the equivalent of the power used by around 750,000 homes — and will be largely run on natural gas-fired power. Meta said it’s funding the new electrical generation, which will be connected to Alberta’s grid.
The data center will be Meta’s largest outside the US, according to Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice president of data center development and strategy.
The company is expanding its global data center footprint to secure more computing capacity. The Alberta project marks the 33rd data center in its fleet. Meta plans to use the computing power for its own AI models and social media apps, including Instagram and Facebook, but it’s also exploring setting up a cloud business that could sell some of that capacity to other companies.
While Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said the company plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure in the US before the end of the decade, Canada has recently sought to lure investment north of the border.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected last year pledging to make the country “the best place in the world to build data centers.” The country has vast reserves of relatively cheap natural gas as well as hydropower.
The largest projects are concentrated in Alberta, the source of most of the country’s oil and gas production. Meta’s latest data center announcement comes after Canadian midstream company Pembina Pipeline Corp. Partners Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management said they would move ahead with a $3.2 billion gas-fired electricity plant in Sturgeon County. Meta confirmed the plant will support its data center.
