Alabama is becoming a two-campus state for Meta, and the company says its first location, in north Huntsville, is already among its favorites.
Henry Thornton, Meta’s community engagement lead for the Huntsville Data Center, recently hosted local media for a tour and Q&A.
“Our Huntsville data center is one of our best in the entire fleet,” Thornton said. “We had an incredible set of local leaders bring us in, and it’s been one of our absolute favorite locations among employees. The hiring here has been incredible, the quality of life in Huntsville is incredible.”
Meta, then operating as Facebook, broke ground in Huntsville in 2018. The campus began serving traffic in 2021. An expansion announced in 2022 is nearly complete and will bring the site to seven buildings and nearly 3.5 million square feet. Total investment in Huntsville exceeds $1.5 billion.
Huntsville is only half of Meta’s Alabama story. The company is building a second campus in Montgomery, putting Meta’s all-in investment across the state past $3 billion.
More than 300 full-time Meta jobs support the facility. Peak construction put more than 1,200 skilled trade workers on site, and hundreds remain there finishing the expansion. Most of the permanent roles are accessible with an associate’s degree or certificate from local schools.
“We have a huge priority to hire locally,” Thornton said. “That’s a big, big commitment that we have as a company, and we’ve had a lot of success doing that. There is so much engineering talent here in Huntsville that we’ve been so glad to bring right here to the data center.”
Meta is a direct-serve customer of the Tennessee Valley Authority and does not take power through Huntsville Utilities. The company has signed the ratepayer protection pledge and matches every megawatt the facility uses with clean and renewable energy. Four Meta-supported projects are adding 687 megawatts of new clean and renewable generation in Alabama.
“We match every megawatt we use with clean and renewable energy as part of our ratepayer protection pledge, where we make sure that none of our data centers increase the bills for any local resident,” Thornton said.
Water comes through a partnership with Huntsville Utilities, and Meta paid $7 million in local water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades. Newer sections of the campus use closed-loop cooling, and servers are built to run at higher temperatures so cooling is needed less often. Meta has committed to becoming water positive by 2030.
“People often have a very misconstrued idea about data centers and water usage,” Thornton said. “We really don’t use that much more than other industrial facilities or perhaps a golf course or something like that. … We work with charities of all types in the communities around our data centers to restore as many gallons to local watersheds as our facilities use.”
The campus sits in an industrial park, which limited the need for major new infrastructure beyond a substation Meta paid for. Thornton said the facility serves only Meta’s own products — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and AI tools — with no third-party tenants.
Meta has put more than $4.5 million in direct funding into Madison County-area schools and nonprofits. Recent grants include $100,000 to the University of Alabama in Huntsville to launch a Bachelor of Science in Cyber Operations Technology and $50,000 to Huntsville City Schools to expand STEM labs across every district middle school. The company also sponsored the America’s 250th celebration downtown.
“We’re proud and involved members of the community supporting education and lots of other initiatives all across Madison County,” Thornton said.
The expansion is expected to keep the Huntsville job count around 300, and Thornton said there are no current plans for further growth at the site.
Meta’s growth in Alabama is now in Montgomery, where the company announced an $800 million campus across from the Hyundai plant in 2024 and has since raised that commitment to more than $1.5 billion.
Meta says the Montgomery site will support 300 operational jobs once complete and 4,000 skilled trade workers at peak construction.
The company has worked with Alabama Power to pay the full cost of the energy it uses there, with the Montgomery Water Works & Sanitary Sewer Board on the full cost of water and wastewater service, and expects the buildings to earn LEED Gold certification.
Thornton summarized the company’s message this way: “A Meta data center is not going to raise your electricity bill. We are responsible users of water, and we are proud and involved members of the community.”
Courtesy of 256 Today.
