Meta's $1.2bn Kuna data center goes live

Meta’s data center in Kuna, Idaho, is officially serving traffic, with an overall investment of $1.2 billion. Gary Demasi, the company’s vice president of data center development and strategy, announced the launch, making the facility Meta’s second AI-optimized data center.

The campus took a different path from the one first announced in early 2022. Meta had originally planned to invest $800 million in a 960,000 sq ft facility, but Kuna was among around a dozen sites temporarily paused while the company re-scoped designs for AI infrastructure and liquid cooling. The completed site therefore represents a larger investment than the original plan.

The cooling system is a closed loop — liquid circulates within the system rather than being consumed in the usual operation described by Meta. The company says it uses zero water for most of the year. Meta also put more than $100 million into a dedicated water and wastewater system for the City of Kuna, tying the facility’s operation to infrastructure beyond its own walls.

Electricity is another part of the build-out. Meta says it matched the data center’s electricity use with 100 percent clean and renewable energy, after adding 645MW of new renewable energy to Ada County. The claim describes the company’s energy matching and local additions; the announcement provides no independent performance assessment.

Concretely, Meta now has an AI-focused facility serving traffic in Idaho, while Meta has invested in a dedicated water and wastewater system for the City of Kuna and added new renewable energy to Ada County. The launch also shows that the project’s overall investment grew from the original $800 million plan to $1.2 billion after the redesign for AI infrastructure. No capacity, traffic-volume or performance figures were disclosed, so the operational scale is still undefined.