Meta inks deals to supply a staggering 6 gigawatts in nuclear power for data center ambitions — enough wattage to supply 5 million homes

Meta just signed multiple deals, making it the biggest purchaser of nuclear power among its AI tech giants. According to Bloomberg, these contracts are expected to deliver over 6 gigawatts to the company, which it will need for its upcoming data centers. At the moment, the company is building the 1GW “Prometheus” data center in Ohio, which will come online this year, while the larger 5GW “Hyperion”, located in Louisiana, is expected to begin operation by 2028. This means that Meta will need at least 6GW of upcoming infrastructure, which will be a challenge to source given that the electric grid cannot scale as fast as data centers.

The power that Meta acquired will come from three different providers — Vistra Corp. with its existing nuclear plants and a couple of startups: OpenAI-backed Oklo, Inc., and TerraPower LLC, which is supported by Bill Gates and Nvidia. Vistra will deliver 2,176MW of power to Meta from its Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants in Ohio, with a further increase of 433MW across the two sites and the Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, both Oklo and TerraPower are still working on their small modular reactor prototypes, which we don’t expect to be deployed until the 2030s.

“At Meta, we are investing in nuclear energy because it provides clean, reliable power that is essential for advancing our AI ambitions and strengthening American leadership in energy innovation,” Meta Head of Global Energy Uvri Parekh said in a press release. “By supporting nuclear power, we ensure that our operations — and the communities we serve — benefit from energy solutions that drive both technological progress and economic growth.”

Just as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted, power will be the bottleneck that will limit AI growth, especially as it takes years for utility providers to build new power plants and expand the grid. A few hyperscalers are going around the problem by using onsite generators to temporarily deliver power until their site gets connected to the wider grid. Although this is more expensive compared to getting power from utility providers, it allows AI data centers to operate immediately without waiting months or years for the local electricity supply to catch up.

On the other hand, the nearly 2.2-MW deal Meta signed with Vistra is crucial for it to immediately start running the Prometheus data center as it completes building it this year. By getting the timing just right, Zuckerberg is potentially saving millions, if not billions of dollars, in electricity costs.

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