Social media giant Meta is developing a gigawatt-scale data center campus outside Indianapolis, Indiana.

The company behind Facebook and Instagram this week announced it is breaking ground on a 1GW campus in Lebanon, Boone County, approximately 29 miles (47 km) northwest of downtown Indianapolis.

“This facility represents an investment of over $10 billion in data center infrastructure and the surrounding community, one of our largest infrastructure investments to date,” the company said.

Renders suggest around a dozen buildings of various sizes are planned.

News that Meta was targeting Lebanon for development surfaced in 2024 after it secured tax abatement from the local council.

Meta noted it will pay the full costs for energy used by its data centers and work closely with utilities to “plan for our energy needs years in advance to ensure residents aren’t negatively impacted.”

As well as offsetting all the campus’ energy use, the firm said it would also be restoring 100 percent of the water it consumes in Lebanon to local watersheds.

“The data center will use a water-efficient closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that recirculates the same water and will use zero water for a majority of the year,” Meta said.

The campus is Meta’s second planned site in Indiana. The company is developing a campus in Jeffersonville, Clark County, on the state border with Kentucky and across the Ohio River from Louisville.

Announced in 2024, the 619-acre Jeffersonville campus will see Meta invest $800 million to develop around 700,000 sq ft (65,030 sqm) of data center space within the River Ridge Commerce Center industrial park. Recent Facebook posts suggest the first buildings are complete company is currently installing racks at the site.

As well as the 30 data center campuses the company has in operation and development globally, Meta is developing several gigawatt-scale sites across the US. Its primary one is Hyperion in Louisiana, which could total more than 5GW at full build-out. Its existing campus in Ohio is also being expanded to gigawatt-scale capacities.

This January, the company set up Meta Compute to focus on building tens of gigawatts of compute this decade, "and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time," according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta is estimating 2026 full-year capex of between $115-135 billion, and has previously said it would spend $600bn on US data centers by 2028.