It’s taken more than two years, but Alberta has attracted its first big hyperscaler — U.S. giant Meta Platforms — to develop the country’s largest data centre.

Meta, owner of Facebook, will unveil plans Wednesday to build a massive data centre campus in Sturgeon Country, about 35 kilometres north of Edmonton, kick-starting one of the largest private-sector investments in the province.

It’s expected to cost more than $13 billion to build — in addition to $4.6 billion for a new gas-fired electricity generating plant being built by Pembina Pipeline, Kineticor Asset Management and its partners to power it.

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Meta’s investment figure does not include the costs of high-tech computer chips needed in these AI-focused facilities, which would push the figure far higher.

“It’s our first in Canada. It’s also pretty unique in the sense that it’s a pretty large deployment, we’re looking at a one gigawatt-scale data centre development,” Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice-president of data centre strategy and development, said in an interview on Wednesday.

“The design for it, the construction of it, the operations will specifically be geared toward artificial intelligence workloads.”

The massive project will include about 2.9 million square feet of facility space. It will be the company’s 33rd data centre to be built in the world, mainly within the United States.

It will be “on par” with large-scale projects Meta has announced this year in Indiana and Texas, Demasi said.

Construction on site will begin shortly. While a precise startup date is not yet set, such projects typically take a couple of years to complete, Demasi added.

The announcement is the culmination of more than 24 months of work by provincial officials to bring a new industry into Alberta — one that has sparked controversy in some jurisdictions, but been pursued by others.

In late 2024, the UCP government set a target of attracting more than $100 billion of such investment into Alberta by 2030.

The Meta........

© Calgary Herald