Construction is underway on the former Richland Parish farmland that is the site of Meta’s most ambitious project yet—a $10 billion, nine-building “Hyperion” data center, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg says could one day rival the footprint of Manhattan. 

The complex—spanning 4 million square feet, larger than Disneyland—will be powered by new Entergy-built gas plants, a build-out that could more than double local electricity demand and test Louisiana’s fragile grid.

As Fortune writes, Hyperion represents Meta’s high-stakes pivot from the costly “metaverse” flop to a massive bet on AI “superintelligence,” with Zuckerberg promising 2 to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity to train large language models. The project has stunned residents in one of the state’s poorest parishes, while sparking pushback from environmentalists, industry users and utility ratepayer advocates concerned about costs, water use and precedent.

With Big Tech pouring billions into hyperscale campuses nationwide, Louisiana’s fast-tracked approval positions the Richland facility as a model—or a cautionary tale—for how utilities and regulators manage AI’s unprecedented energy demands.

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