Meta flags hurdles to new U.S. data centers

Meta President and Vice Chair Dina Powell McCormick said the U.S. midterm election results will make launching new data center projects in the country significantly harder. Speaking at the WSJ Tech conference, she stated that to start new data center build‑outs in the United States today will be very challenging and that she expects a lot more review of new proposals. She linked this tougher environment to the Democrats’ sweeping wins, noting that hostility toward data centers was prominent in political advertising and exit polling.

Powell McCormick said that many hyperscale cloud providers are now asking whether they need to build outside the United States. She described this as a way of hedging large investments as regulatory and political risks rise. Meta is considering projects in other countries while it reassesses how and where to expand its infrastructure footprint.

Opposition to data centers featured directly on ballots in the latest election cycle. Voters in more than 30 towns and cities across nine states backed bans, moratoriums, or other limits on data center development. Democrats ran ads targeting the tech industry or data centers in more than 130 federal and gubernatorial races, underscoring how the issue has entered mainstream political debate.

Industry‑wide, developers had called off at least $260 billion in planned U.S. data center projects as of mid‑October. Most of these projects were halted at the local level because of permitting decisions or actions by town and county governments. This pattern reinforces Meta’s warning that new large‑scale facilities may face lengthy scrutiny and a higher risk of cancellation.

Meta is pushing ahead with several major U.S. data center builds even as the political backdrop shifts. The company is constructing the Hyperion facility in Louisiana and the Prometheus site in Ohio, and it is developing another site in Texas in partnership with BlackRock. These projects are designed to support Meta’s long‑term infrastructure needs for AI and other compute‑intensive services.

Powell McCormick indicated that expanding existing projects is likely to be easier than launching new ones. She said communities that already host facilities have had years to see economic benefits, easing some concerns about costs. She also recounted a conversation with a newly elected governor who had emphasized data centers during the campaign and, after winning, urged Meta to meet soon after inauguration to keep investment and jobs from moving elsewhere.

Despite some outreach from state leaders, Meta faces new policy hurdles. The incoming governors of Ohio and Texas have both backed conditional halts on new data center construction. Powell McCormick also commented that constructing data centers would be harder under Democrats than under Republicans, reflecting the policy stances that emerged during the elections.

At the same time, interest in attracting investment has not disappeared. Powell McCormick said the governor‑elect who campaigned on data centers told Meta that the state did not want to lose these projects or the associated employment. This mix of moratorium proposals and job‑focused outreach adds uncertainty to Meta’s planning for U.S. capacity.

The heightened political and regulatory scrutiny comes as Meta ramps up spending to meet AI computing demand. The company has said it plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures this year while building the computing capacity behind personal AI agents. Powell McCormick said securing computing power now consumes 80% of her working hours, highlighting how central infrastructure has become to Meta’s strategy.

Mark Zuckerberg has previously described Meta’s intention to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence, and a shared graphic depicted a data center footprint covering much of Manhattan. In this context, the warning that U.S. projects will face more review suggests that a larger share of Meta’s future build‑out may need to occur outside the country if domestic hurdles continue to grow.