Meta Sturgeon County AI Data Center

Meta is going north. The company said in July 2026 that it will build a 1-gigawatt AI data center in Sturgeon County, Alberta, at a cost of roughly $9 billion and a build schedule of two to three years. It is Meta’s first facility in Canada and its 33rd data center overall.

Project Scope

The site sits on land long zoned for industrial use, in a part of Alberta with headroom on the grid and room to add generation. Meta cited grid strength, energy access, a local labor pool, and cooperative community partners as the deciding factors. At 1 GW of IT load, this lands in the same weight class as the Louisiana and Ohio campuses, which means multiple buildings, on-site substations, and a power interconnect that will take as long to permit as the shells take to build.

Alberta’s appeal is not subtle. The province has surplus generation, a deregulated electricity market, and a permitting posture that has been openly courting hyperscalers while Virginia, Ohio, and Georgia tighten up. Cold ambient air helps the cooling math too.

Why It Matters

The interesting part isn’t the gigawatt. It’s the border. U.S. utilities are quoting interconnection queues measured in years, and several states have started taxing or throttling data center load. Alberta is offering the opposite. When a hyperscaler with a $145 billion capex budget starts routing capacity around American grid constraints, that is a signal about U.S. transmission policy, not about Canada.

For contractors, Alberta means a different labor market, different codes, and a much smaller pool of mission-critical trade capacity than Northern Virginia. Expect the mechanical and electrical scopes to draw heavily on U.S.-based specialty subs who are already booked through 2028.

Project Team & Details