Meta Expands AI Infrastructure with First Canadian Data Center in Alberta

According to Yahoo Finance, Meta (META-US) continues to expand its AI infrastructure. On Wednesday (8th), the company announced it will build its first data center in Alberta, Canada, as part of its AI development plan.

The data center will have a capacity of 1GW, becoming Meta's 33rd global facility, with an estimated investment of approximately $9.18 billion. The construction phase is expected to create around 3,000 jobs, while the completed facility will provide approximately 300 long-term positions.

Meta also stated it will invest $42.4 million to upgrade local infrastructure. For cooling, the new data center will adopt a closed-loop liquid cooling system combined with dry cooling, eliminating the need for water during normal operations. Water will only be used for fire safety and daily living purposes.

Meta expects to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this fiscal year on data centers and related expenses. This massive capital expenditure has raised investor concerns, with Meta's stock price falling 16% over the past 12 months and 8.6% year-to-date.

Wall Street is also watching whether Meta can execute its AI development roadmap, especially after last year's Llama 4 model underperformed market expectations.

Since then, Meta has restructured its AI strategy, establishing the Meta Superintelligence Labs, and launched Muse Spark, the first model from the new team, in April this year.

This past Tuesday, Meta released its second Muse series model, Muse Image.

Additionally, Bloomberg reported last week that Meta is exploring the sale of excess computing power to third-party customers, potentially putting it in direct competition with major cloud providers such as Amazon (AMZN-US), Alphabet (GOOGL-US), Microsoft (MSFT-US), and emerging cloud service provider CoreWeave (CRWV-US).

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously indicated on an earnings call that the company intends to sell idle computing capacity.

The market believes that if this initiative proceeds smoothly, it could open a new revenue stream for Meta, enhance profitability, and help investors better understand how the company is converting its massive AI investments into tangible returns.