According to half a dozen people affiliated with companies working on or around the Meta site, the land purchase paves the way for a phase 2 expansion of the Hyperion project, which has been widely discussed, including by President Donald Trump, as one of the nation’s largest AI data centers in the works.
Fortune observed active work underway on the newly acquired land, which several sources say was purchased from local landowner George B. Franklin & Sons roughly three to four months ago. Fortune visited the Richland Parish Assessor’s office, where staffers shared paperwork that said the parcel is still listed in Franklin’s name—though they emphasized it can take some time for the filed deed to be updated.
Activity on the land, which lies west of the original site, included utility markings, heavy equipment, on-site workers, and portable facilities—signs consistent with early-stage site preparation. Permits were posted, but could not be read from the publicly accessible road.
Meta declined to comment, though it had previously told Fortune that the company had “not shared anything about additional phases in terms of land.” George B. Franklin & Sons did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The apparent expansion of Meta’s already enormous project offers a window into how the AI infrastructure boom is unfolding across the U.S. Hyperscalers—the Big Tech companies building out their AI infrastructure—are racing to lock up land, power, and financing for massive AI data-center campuses, often through debt-financed, politically sensitive expansions. Some, like the Louisiana project, are expanding so quickly that it may be difficult for local communities to spot or register concerns in real time.
The original 2,250-acre project is nearly five miles long and a mile wide—already almost three times the size of Central Park. More than 3,700 construction workers have been working on the site, with reported plans for that number to climb to 5,000. And beyond the temporary employment created by the construction project, the company said it would create 500 new full-time, long-term jobs at the data center in the struggling, economically depressed area.
The new organization is designed to secure the massive amounts of computing power—measured in gigawatts, each of which could power hundreds of thousands of homes—needed for Meta’s drive to build AI models that lead to “superintelligence.” And the behemoth under construction in rural Louisiana is a key part of that mission.
“Meta is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time,” Zuckerberg wrote. “How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.”
