Building Texas — How Meta invests in jobs, infrastructure and communities across the state
We’ve been proud to call Texas home for over a decade. Across three communities — Fort Worth, Temple, and El Paso — our data centers are supporting thousands of jobs, funding local infrastructure, adding clean energy to the grid, and supporting local schools and nonprofits. In each community, we hire locally, investing not just capital but long-term commitment.
Across Texas, millions of people and businesses use our free technology and services. In fact, over 2 million businesses in Texas actively use Facebook alone, more than 98% of them being small and medium sized. Data centers help drive these services and deliver innovation every day–whether it is people messaging a loved one, joining a small business livestream, or accessing emergency information during a severe weather event.
Texas by the numbers
~2,500
Full time employees across our data centers, offices and research lab
6,400+
Skilled trade jobs supported at peak construction across all three data center sites
$7.7M+
Direct funding to schools and nonprofits in Fort Worth, Temple and El Paso communities
270+
Grants and sponsorships to local organizations since 2018
Partnering with Texas
We are committed to being a good neighbor and community partner throughout Texas. We work with cities and local partners to fund new critical infrastructure — including roads, energy, water and wastewater systems — and provide grants annually to support local organizations.
In El Paso alone, that commitment amounts to nearly $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements including energy, roads, water and wastewater. At every site, we pay the full costs of our data centers’ energy and water use so consumers are not negatively impacted.
Partnering with local organizations
Every year, local nonprofits throughout Texas receive direct funding through our Data Center Community Action Grants program to put technology to use for community benefit and improve STEAM education. Since 2018, we’ve provided more than 270 grants, helping organizations grow their impact and reach more people. We also offer no-cost digital skills training workshops that help local small businesses and nonprofits increase impact.
Fort Worth
- Fort Worth Museum of Science and History: Modernizing the children’s museum exhibit technology and STEAM experience for students and families
- Junior Achievement of the Chisholm Trail: Uniting the local entrepreneurial ecosystem for Tarrant County high school students
- Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge: Expansion of the Marty Leonard Lotus Marsh Boardwalk, enabling science and environmental education for all ages
- $5.2M+ in direct funding to Tarrant County-area schools and nonprofits through 215+ grants since 2018
Temple
- Temple College: Partnering on two innovative spaces — the Meta AI Computer Lab and the Integrated Robotics Manufacturing & Innovation Lab — empowering students with hands-on training in emerging technologies
- $1.7M+ in direct funding to Bell County-area schools and nonprofits through 55+ grants since 2022
El Paso
- $500,000 workforce development grant to El Paso Public Schools connecting students with real-world learning experiences and career pathways in STEM and skilled trades
Temple, we are online!
Since breaking ground in 2022, Temple has shown us what true partnership looks like — strong local leadership, educators who champion their students, and neighbors who invest in one another every day. This year, we celebrated the Meta Temple Data Center coming online and serving the community that welcomed us from the start.
Our goal is to restore more water than we consume — starting right here in Texas!
Our water stewardship program focuses on increasing data center water efficiency, supporting water restoration and conservation projects in local watersheds, and being transparent with our water data.
In collaboration with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, we are supporting eight water restoration projects across Texas, led by local community partners including Ducks Unlimited, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texan by Nature, DigDeep, Frontera Land Alliance and others.
Fort Worth
- We support wetland protection and restoration of Long Leaf Pine forests, partnering with Ducks Unlimited, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Litman Foundation, Texan by Nature and Upper Trinity Conservation Trust.
Temple
- We partnered with ION Water to conserve vital potable water resources by deploying smart leak detection at affordable housing properties. The project is projected to save approximately 5.2 million gallons of water annually.
El Paso
- In high-water-stress regions like El Paso, we will be restoring 200% of the water we use — this means twice as much water as we consume to local watersheds. Initial projects include delivering clean, running water to over 100 homes through DigDeep and irrigation-efficiency projects for local farmers that will restore millions of gallons of water per year.
Investing in the grid
We pay the full costs for the energy used by our data centers, so they aren’t passed on to consumers. We work with our Texas utilities to plan for and meet our energy needs years in advance of our data centers coming online and make additional investments to add new energy to the grid. We also match our electricity use with 100% clean and renewable energy. Today in Texas, we are supporting more than 40 projects that are adding over 9 gigawatts of new clean and renewable energy to the grid, with 1.8 gigawatts already operational.
In El Paso, our investment is catalyzing $500 million in new generating capacity for El Paso Electric — a once-in-a-generation energy infrastructure upgrade — plus $410 million in transmission and grid upgrades that benefit all ratepayers by creating a more robust and reliable electrical system.
Jobs to build and operate our data centers
We’re committed to supporting local jobs in communities where we have data centers. Each data center building requires thousands of skilled trade jobs to construct — steel workers, pipefitters, electricians, carpenters, fiber technicians and more. Once operational, each data center supports hundreds of jobs — electricians, HVAC specialists, server and network techs and engineers — to run some of the world’s most advanced data centers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Across Texas, our three data centers support:
- ~600 operational jobs
- 6,400+ skilled trade workers at peak construction
- Thousands of indirect and induced jobs in local economies
America’s Workforce Academy
We are investing in the workforce that’s building America’s digital infrastructure — starting with the communities we call home. That commitment includes America’s Workforce Academy (AWA), a nationwide, unprecedented fast-track to a long-term career in a skilled trade.
Powered by an initial $115 million first-year investment, AWA is a cost-free program that supports all participants while they learn and then guarantees a job for all graduates. Graduates earn both the industry-recognized National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) credential and an America’s Workforce Certificate, both designed to travel with the worker across employers and industry sectors.
We’re proud to launch AWA in Texas as one of the 2026 pilot locations, partnering with Workforce Solutions Borderplex in El Paso.
Our Texas data centers
texas
Fort Worth
$1.5 billion+ investment
2015 break ground
1,200 skilled trade workers on site at peak construction
200+ operational jobs supported once completed
texas
Temple
$1.2 billion investment
2022 break ground
1,200 skilled trade workers on site at peak construction
~100 operational jobs supported once completed
texas
El Paso
$10 billion+ investment
2025 break ground
4,000+ skilled trade workers on site at peak construction
300+ operational jobs supported once completed
Frequently Asked Questions
Our data centers are designed to minimize water use. We work with local utilities to source water and deploy efficient cooling systems — including closed-loop, liquid-cooled designs with dry cooling — that significantly reduce the water our facilities need.
Take our El Paso data center: its closed-loop, liquid-cooled system will be filled once and recirculate the same water, requiring zero additional water for cooling during most of the year. Total projected water consumption for the campus is less than that of two typical golf courses in the Southwest. And we will restore twice as much water as we consume there to local watersheds. We’re restoring nearly 178 million gallons per year by 2030 through projects that boost water supply, enhance water quality, and provide safe drinking water. That’s enough to meet the annual water needs of more than 1,900 Texas households.
No. We pay the full cost of the energy used by our data centers, so local residents and businesses don’t bear those expenses. In fact, Meta pays hundreds of millions of dollars every year to help build new grid infrastructure — like substations and transmission lines — that benefit all customers. In El Paso, our payments are expected to cover about $40 million in annual electricity costs that local ratepayers would otherwise bear.
Before developing each site, we assess potential noise contributions to inform how we design and operate our facilities.
We evaluate a range of mitigation options — from modifying layouts and selecting quieter equipment to adjusting our operations. All of our projects comply with applicable noise requirements at the local, state, and federal level.
During construction, we follow all local ordinances — including construction hours — and work to minimize disruption.
Yes. Meta data centers are a long-term commitment. Once a data center is operational, it supports hundreds of multidisciplinary jobs — including electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, server technicians, network engineers, security professionals, and more. We also continue to invest in communities long after construction ends through our annual Data Center Community Action Grants program and partnerships with local schools and nonprofits. In Fort Worth alone, which has been operational since 2017, we’ve provided more than $5.2 million in direct funding to Tarrant County-area schools and nonprofits through 175+ grants since 2018.
Explore all Meta data centers in Texas
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