Trump says Meta’s Louisiana AI data center to cost $50B

Washington, August 27, 2025 — President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that Meta Platforms’ upcoming AI data center in Louisiana will cost $50 billion, cementing its status as one of the most expensive technology infrastructure projects in U.S. history. The disclosure was made during a cabinet meeting, where Trump described the figure as “given to me by Mark Zuckerberg” and used a dramatic visual comparison to Manhattan to emphasize the site’s scale.

“This is something given to me by Mark Zuckerberg,” Trump said, pointing to a graphic of the planned facility superimposed over Manhattan. “For $50 million you can build a very nice shopping center. So I never understood when they said $50 billion for a plant. But when you look at this, you understand why.”

Hyperion Is Meta’s Flagship AI Campus

The Louisiana site, named Hyperion, will be a 5-gigawatt data center campus located in Richland Parish. It forms the centerpiece of Meta’s broader AI infrastructure strategy, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined in July.

• Prometheus, a 1-GW campus in Ohio, is already under construction and will come online first.

• Hyperion, at five times that scale, represents Meta’s largest single-site commitment to date.

• Meta has signaled Hyperion will serve as the backbone for training and deploying its next-generation AI models, including advanced multimodal systems.

To illustrate the scale, Zuckerberg previously unveiled a rendering of Hyperion rising from the Manhattan skyline, depicting the campus as a massive blue block that dwarfed surrounding skyscrapers. Some say, this is Meta’s answer to OpenAI’s Stargate Norway.

Financing a $50B Facility

Meta has enlisted heavyweight partners to fund the build. PIMCO and Blue Owl Capital are leading a $29 billion financing package, according to Reuters. This financing complements Meta’s own $10+ billion commitment announced last year.

The $50 billion figure dwarfs most previous technology infrastructure projects, reflecting the skyrocketing cost of AI compute. With tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs expected, plus unprecedented power and cooling requirements, Hyperion will be as much an energy megaproject as a data center.

Industry Implications

Meta’s Hyperion project signals that the AI arms race is no longer about model releases alone, it is about infrastructure supremacy. Competitors including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all scaling their data center footprints, but Meta’s $50B Louisiana bet sets a new bar.

It also raises questions for regulators and local communities:

• Environmental impact: Can renewable energy cover such enormous power demands?

• Economic benefit: How many jobs will Hyperion create in rural Louisiana, and at what cost?

• Geopolitical context: Will facilities of this size invite scrutiny under national security frameworks around critical infrastructure?