Meta said on July 8 it will build its first Canadian data center, a 1-gigawatt campus in Alberta’s Sturgeon County that will cost about US$9 billion.

The project will take two to three years to complete and support Meta’s expansion of infrastructure for AI services.

International Business Machines defines hyperscale sites as drawing more than 100 megawatts.

That puts a 1-gigawatt campus at the high end of that range.

The project enters a market with only five hyperscale data centers operating in Canada and 96 more announced or under construction, showing broader expansion in Alberta and elsewhere.

Alberta has been courting AI data center investment, with natural gas expected to be a leading power source.

Grid access is limited. The province’s first-phase large-load program had only 1.2 gigawatts available for data centers, less than 6% of requested capacity.

Sturgeon County said data centers are expected to use a separate industrial process-water system instead of the potable water network.

Meta said the Alberta site will be its 33rd data center.

The spending is part of a broader capital expenditure plan of up to US$145 billion this year that investors are watching closely.

🔗 Source: CNBC

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