•The facility spans more than two million sq ft and will be Meta's 28th US data centre.
•It reflects a shift as tech firms choose locations based on energy availability, not user proximity.
What happened
Meta Platforms has started construction on a new data centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The project is valued at more than $1bn and is designed to support AI computing workloads. The facility is located at Fair Oaks Innovation Park and spans more than two million square feet. It marks Meta's first data centre in Oklahoma and its 28th in the United States.
The company expects the project to create over 1,000 construction jobs at peak activity. Around 100 permanent operational roles will follow once the facility is complete. Meta has also said it will cover full water and wastewater service costs for the site. Local officials highlight the region's strong energy availability as a key factor in attracting large-scale digital infrastructure investment.
Why it's important
The Tulsa project shows how AI expansion is increasingly constrained by physical infrastructure rather than software limits. Data centres now depend heavily on electricity supply and cooling capacity, making energy availability a key factor in where new facilities are built. Location decisions are now driven more by infrastructure economics than by proximity to users.
At the same time, the economic benefits remain uneven. Construction brings large short-term employment, but long-term operational jobs are limited. This creates a growing gap between infrastructure scale and local economic return.
Also read: Maine passes first US statewide ban on large data centres
Also read: Europe data centre growth hit by power constraints
