Meta in Arizona

Meta Platforms, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, runs the Mesa Data Center at 3841 S. Ellsworth Road in Mesa, which has been serving traffic since January 2025. As of January 2025 the first two buildings were operating and three more were under construction, with the second phase expected in 2026; Arizona AI found no later source confirming whether those buildings are complete. Meta's Mesa info sheet, read in October 2026, lists $1.2 billion of data center investment in Arizona without saying whether that figure is spent to date or the planned total. Company-wide, Meta reports two segments: Family of Apps, which includes those apps, and Reality Labs, which covers virtual and augmented reality products. It was incorporated in Delaware in July 2004, introduced the Meta company brand in October 2021, and has its principal executive offices in Menlo Park, California; SRP and DPR Construction documents from 2022 refer to it as Meta (formerly Facebook).

In May 2021 the City of Mesa considered agreements with Redale LLC covering approximately 396 acres at the southeast corner of Elliot and Ellsworth roads. City documents name the developer as Redale LLC, which Data Center Dynamics reported was the name Facebook used while negotiating the project [not independently verified]. The Mesa City Council approved the item on May 17, 2021, with Vice Mayor Duff casting the only no vote and opposing a mega data center on 396 acres over its water use. The Phoenix Business Journal reported that Meta acquired its 396-acre site in 2021 for $123.2 million. According to the Mesa Tribune, Meta sold 15 acres of the site to EdgeCore in February 2023 for $1.2 million [not independently verified]. Meta broke ground in Mesa in August 2021, and in May 2022 it announced three more buildings, describing a planned campus of more than 2.5 million square feet. The city agreement allows up to 3 million square feet. On January 30, 2025, Meta announced that the Mesa Data Center was serving traffic. As of January 2025, the first two buildings were operating, three more were under construction and the second phase was expected in 2026; Arizona AI found no later source confirming whether those buildings are complete.

In January 2025, Meta said the facility supported more than 200 operational jobs; its Mesa info sheet, read in October 2026, lists 200+ operational jobs supported once completed. Meta also said construction drew an average of 2,000 skilled trade workers on site at peak. Meta describes these as jobs the facility supports and does not say how many are Meta employees; no source states how many people Meta employs in Arizona. In its January 2025 announcement, Meta describes the Mesa site as part of the global infrastructure that brings its technologies and services to life; the announcement does not say which workloads run there. Company-wide, Meta says its AI investments help power content ranking, recommendations, advertiser tools and new generative AI experiences, and in its July 2026 filing it projects capital expenditures of approximately $130 billion to $145 billion in 2026 to support its AI efforts and core business. Meta owns 30 data center locations worldwide. The filing gives no Arizona breakdown of that spending, so Arizona AI does not attribute it to Mesa.

Salt River Project proposed Project Huckleberry, a half-mile 230 kV transmission line and substation to serve the data center, with Meta funding the cost of that infrastructure. The Arizona Corporation Commission approved the project's Certificate of Environmental Compatibility at its August 16, 2022 open meeting [not independently verified]. No source read confirmed when the line entered service. In October 2024 SRP celebrated the official commencement of the Eleven Mile Solar Center in Pinal County, a 300 MW solar project with a 300 MW / 1,200 MWh battery system that SRP says provides power to Meta's Mesa data center. In December 2023, SRP announced an allocation to Meta of 50 MW from the West Line Solar Facility in Eloy plus a portion of the Brittlebush Solar Facility in Coolidge; no source read confirms the size of the Brittlebush allocation or when it began. In January 2025 Meta said three Meta-supported SRP projects were adding 450 MW of new renewable energy in Arizona. Under Mesa's 2021 agreement for the site, the annual water allowance is 550 acre-feet for the first phase, rising to 1,100 and 1,400 acre-feet if later phases are built, and the company must assign 5,500 acre-feet of long-term storage credits to Mesa. Meta reported 24,657 MWh of electricity use and 57 megaliters of water withdrawal at Mesa for 2024, before Meta announced in January 2025 that the site was serving traffic. Meta says it pays the full cost of the energy and the water and wastewater service its data center uses, and that it will restore 200% of the water the data center consumes to local watersheds; its info sheet, read in October 2026, says it has supported 12 water restoration projects so far.

Meta's recent record also includes setbacks. In May 2026 Meta made a headcount reduction of approximately 8,000 employees worldwide, and its headcount was 75,472 as of June 30, 2026, a figure that still included the employees affected by that reduction. The filing gives no Arizona breakdown of the reduction, so Arizona AI does not attribute it to Mesa. In October 2023 the Arizona Attorney General and 41 other state attorneys general filed lawsuits against Meta in federal and state courts alleging that the company knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and its other social media platforms that purposefully addict children and teens. On August 26, 2026 the Attorney General announced a $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta, under which Arizona will receive approximately $223 million. The announcement does not give a payment schedule or say whether a court has approved the settlement, and no later update was found. The case concerns Meta's social media platforms.

Locally, Meta says it has provided more than $2.4 million in direct funding to Maricopa County-area schools and nonprofits, and says its total support for the Mesa College Promise program at Mesa Community College reached $300,000 with a $225,000 grant announced in January 2025. In August 2022, DPR Construction announced that it and Meta were bringing Meta's paid, eight-week Hardhat in Hand skilled trades training program to the Mesa site; no source says whether the program is still running. Taken together, the facts show a large data center campus in Mesa that began serving traffic in January 2025 and, as of January 2025, was partly built, with a dedicated SRP line and substation proposed for the site in 2022 whose in-service date no source confirmed, solar power that SRP says serves it, and city water allowances set by a 2021 agreement. Arizona AI found no source stating its role in Meta's AI work, and no source states an Arizona employee count.