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Meta Platforms (META) announced on Wednesday that it is investing $1.5 billion to build a data center in El Paso.
META’s stock was down more than 4.5% in Wednesday’s midday trade. Retail sentiment around the company on Stockwits dipped to ‘bearish’ from ‘neutral’ territory while chatter remained at ‘high’ levels over the past day.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company said the data center is designed to scale to a gigawatt (GW) and is intended to support its growing artificial intelligence (AI) workload. It also touted that the plant will create 1,800 construction jobs at its peak and around 100 operational jobs once complete.
Meta said it plans to integrate a closed-loop liquid-cooling system that will use zero water for most of the year, contributing to the company’s broader water-positive goal by 2030. The company said it will also source 100% of the center’s electricity from renewable energy. Meta also noted that in the company’s agreement with El Paso Electric, it has paid for new grid infrastructure required to connect the data center, including new transmission lines and substations.
The tech giant added that the El Paso data center will complement Meta’s AI initiatives by powering applications ranging from AI assistants and live translations to video editing tools.
This new data center will be the third entity the company has set up in Texas, in addition to the data centers in Forth Worth and Temple. According to the Meta Platforms, it has invested more than $10 billion in Texas so far.
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