Meta $1B Tulsa Center

Meta has started building a more than $1 billion artificial-intelligence data center in Tulsa, its first such facility in Oklahoma. (about.fb.com) The Tulsa site is slated for Fair Oaks Innovation Park in east Tulsa and will span more than 2 million square feet, according to Meta and Reuters. Meta said it would be its 28th data center in the United States and 32nd worldwide. (about.fb.com, reuters.com) Meta said the project will support about 1,000 construction jobs at peak buildout and roughly 100 operating jobs after it opens. Tulsa World reported the facility is expected to be operational by 2028. (about.fb.com, tulsaworld.com) An “AI-optimized” data center is a warehouse-scale computing site built for the dense clusters of chips that train and run artificial-intelligence systems, not just store photos or serve webpages. Meta said the Tulsa campus will be configured for its AI workloads across products and services used by more than 3.5 billion people. (about.fb.com, datacenters.atmeta.com) The Tulsa build fits a much larger spending surge at Meta. In its January 28, 2026 results, the company said 2025 capital expenditures reached $72.22 billion, as it kept expanding servers, networking and other infrastructure tied to its artificial-intelligence push. (nasdaq.com) Meta is pitching the project as an infrastructure and workforce deal for the city. The company said it will put more than $25 million into local road and water upgrades and work with Tulsa Tech and Tulsa Community College on a training program aimed at producing more than 200 graduates a year for digital-infrastructure jobs. (about.fb.com) Power and water are the central local questions because large data centers can strain both systems. Meta said it will pay the full costs of its electricity, water and wastewater service, and said the site will use a closed-loop liquid-cooling system that recirculates water and uses zero water for most of the year. (datacenters.atmeta.com, kjrh.com) The company also said it will restore 100% of the water the Tulsa site consumes to local watersheds and back new clean-energy projects in Oklahoma totaling 1,500 megawatts. One listed water project would deploy irrigation technology across about 1,500 acres of crops and save more than 50 million gallons a year. (datacenters.atmeta.com) Not everyone in Tulsa is sold. Public Radio Tulsa reported that residents and officials had already pushed back on Project Anthem, the east Tulsa development Meta later confirmed it would occupy, and the Tulsa City Council passed a moratorium on data centers last month after complaints about environmental and infrastructure impacts. (publicradiotulsa.org) That leaves Tulsa with the same tradeoff facing many U.S. cities in the artificial-intelligence buildout: a billion-dollar project, hundreds of jobs and new utility investment on one side, and long-term questions about land, power and water on the other. Meta has broken ground; the local argument is moving from whether the project is real to how it will be managed. (reuters.com, publicradiotulsa.org)