The announcement, made July 13, confirms Hyperion as the largest single-site data center commitment in history. When Meta broke ground in December 2024, the project was planned as a 2 GW campus costing roughly $10 billion. By October 2025, when Meta and Blue Owl Capital formed a joint venture to finance the buildout, the figure had grown to $27 billion. Nine months later, it has nearly doubled again.
Scale and Timeline
According to Meta, Hyperion will reach 2 GW of capacity by 2030, with the full 5 GW buildout complete by approximately 2032. To put that in perspective: 5 GW is roughly the output of five large nuclear reactors, and exceeds the peak electricity demand of the entire state of Louisiana's residential sector. The campus will consume more power than most American cities.
The expansion also includes more than $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements covering roads, water, and wastewater systems. Since ground-breaking, local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion in contracts from Meta, and the company is funding full scholarships for Richland Parish high school graduates pursuing data center-related trade certificates.
The Cost Escalation Signal
For risk analysts, Hyperion's cost trajectory — $10B to $27B to $50B in 19 months — is the most important data point. It reflects a combination of scope expansion, AI hardware cost inflation, tariff-driven materials escalation, and the premium Meta is willing to pay for speed and scale in the AI race. Similar cost escalations are being reported across the hyperscale pipeline, suggesting that headline project figures announced in 2024–2025 systematically understate final capital requirements.
The financing structure is equally notable. The Blue Owl joint venture model — bringing private credit capital into hyperscale infrastructure — has become the template for AI buildout financing, spreading data center exposure across institutional portfolios that historically held no infrastructure concentration risk of this kind.
Community Tension as a Persistent Variable
Fortune reports the project has "split the town in two" — with residents divided between those benefiting from contracts, jobs, and scholarships, and those concerned about water use, electricity costs, and the transformation of a rural parish. Even with generous tax incentives and community investment, Hyperion illustrates that social license remains fragile at this scale. In a quarter when New York imposed the first statewide moratorium, the contrast between Louisiana's open-arms approach and New York's regulatory pause defines the two poles of state data center policy.