Meta Platforms (META) Stock Drops 8% as Texas Data Center Investment Jumps to $10 Billion

TLDR

• Meta raised its El Paso, Texas AI data center investment from $1.5 billion to $10 billion — a more than sixfold increase
• The facility targets 1 gigawatt of capacity and is expected to open in 2028
• Meta confirmed hundreds of layoffs across multiple teams on Wednesday
• Meta stock fell 8% Thursday after two court verdicts found it liable for harm to young users
• Meta’s 2025 capital expenditure guidance stands at up to $135 billion

Meta started building its El Paso data center in October 2024 with a $1.5 billion price tag. That number has now jumped to $10 billion. Gary Demasi, Meta’s VP of data center development, revealed the updated figure at the annual Borderplex Alliance summit in El Paso.

The facility sits on a 1.2 million square foot site and is targeting 1 gigawatt of capacity by the time it opens in 2028. It will be the company’s third data center in Texas and sits among roughly 30 total globally, 26 of which are in the United States.

Meta says the project will support more than 4,000 construction workers at peak activity and create 300 permanent jobs once operational.

Meta Platforms, Inc., META

The company also said it has projects under contract that will add more than 5,000 megawatts of clean energy to the Texas grid. To address water concerns that have followed AI data center buildouts elsewhere in the country, Meta says it is running eight water restoration projects in the state.

One of those includes a partnership with nonprofit DigDeep to bring clean running water to over 100 homes for the first time. The new facility will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system that recycles water, and Meta projects water usage will be comparable to a typical regional golf course.

Court Defeats Hit the Stock

Thursday’s 8% drop in META was tied to two separate court verdicts holding the company liable for harm to young users. The rulings raised concerns on Wall Street about potential changes to the design practices behind Meta’s advertising business.

The stock is now down 17% for the year. Unlike peers Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, Meta has no cloud infrastructure business to offset its heavy AI spending — a fact that has drawn extra scrutiny from investors.

Meta said in January that capital expenditures for 2025 would reach up to $135 billion, putting it among the biggest spenders in the current AI infrastructure buildout. Big Tech as a whole is projected to spend over $630 billion on AI infrastructure this year.

Layoffs Running Alongside the Spending

While the data center budget grows, Meta is cutting headcount. The company confirmed hundreds of layoffs on Wednesday across Facebook, global operations, recruiting, sales, and its virtual reality division. An earlier Reuters report had flagged that layoffs could affect 20% or more of the workforce.

On the hardware side, Meta signed major chip deals with Nvidia and AMD in February and this week became the first confirmed customer for Arm’s new data center processor. The company also recently revealed four new versions of its in-house MTIA AI accelerators.

Meta’s El Paso site was last photographed in March 2026, five months after groundbreaking.

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