Meta Breaks Ground on $1 Billion AI Data Center in Tulsa as City Moratorium Exempts 'Project Anthem'
Meta's first Oklahoma data center — a 2-million-square-foot AI facility in East Tulsa — was grandfathered past a city moratorium that paused similar projects, drawing local protests.
Overview
Meta broke ground on April 21, 2026 on a $1 billion AI-optimized data center in East Tulsa, Oklahoma — the company’s first facility in the state, its 28th in the United States, and its 32nd globally. Known internally as Project Anthem, the 2-million-square-foot campus at Fair Oaks Innovation Park is slated for completion in 2028, according to Meta’s official announcement. The groundbreaking took place even as the Tulsa City Council had voted just weeks earlier to impose a nine-month moratorium on new data center construction in the city — a measure that explicitly exempted Project Anthem, which had already advanced through permitting before the pause took effect.
What We Know
The Tulsa facility will be built at Fair Oaks Innovation Park, a 340-acre site in East Tulsa situated between 11th Street and Creek Turnpike, according to the Tulsa Flyer. Oklahoma’s Department of Commerce notes it is the state’s first site designated to the REDI (Readiness for Economic Development and Investment) national standard — a certification indicating advanced permitting and infrastructure readiness for large industrial projects, according to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.
Meta says the facility will use a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that requires zero water for cooling during most of the year, and that the company will match 100 percent of the facility’s electricity consumption with clean energy. Meta is additionally committing to add over 1,500 megawatts of new clean energy capacity to Oklahoma’s grid, according to Meta’s announcement. General contractor Fortis Construction will oversee a peak workforce of more than 1,000 construction workers; the facility is expected to employ roughly 100 full-time staff once operational, according to KRMG.
Meta is also investing more than $25 million in local road and water system upgrades surrounding the site, and has announced a ten-year partnership with agricultural technology company Phytech to deploy plant-sensor irrigation technology across approximately 1,500 acres of local farmland — corn, soybeans, and winter wheat — with a stated goal of saving over 50 million gallons of water annually, according to Meta’s data center blog. The company frames these water offset programs as part of its broader goal to reach water-positive status globally by 2030.
The Tulsa Flyer reported that the local economic impact projection runs to $3.3 billion in economic activity during the three-year construction window, and that Meta will contribute an estimated $36 million in property tax revenue over 25 years — representing 15 percent of the assessed liability, with Meta receiving an 85 percent tax exemption negotiated as part of the deal, according to the Tulsa Flyer.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt welcomed the investment, citing the state’s “energy abundance and business-friendly environment” as key attractors, according to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. Gary Demasi, Meta’s Vice President of Data Center Strategy, cited “great access to infrastructure and energy, a talented workforce, and outstanding local partners” as reasons for selecting the Tulsa site.
The groundbreaking is part of a broader Meta commitment, announced earlier in 2026, to spend $60 billion on capital expenditure for AI infrastructure in the United States this year alone, with a stated $600 billion, three-year infrastructure pledge. The Tulsa facility is Meta’s second groundbreaking in as many months following the Lebanon, Indiana campus previously reported by The Machine Herald.
What We Don’t Know
The moratorium backdrop raises unresolved questions. City Councilor Christian Bengel, whose district includes the data center site, had previously signed a non-disclosure agreement with Meta before the project was publicly identified, and subsequently voted in favor of the nine-month pause on new data centers in March 2026 — yet Project Anthem was grandfathered in, according to the Tulsa Flyer. Whether the NDA constrained Bengel’s ability to represent constituent concerns during the moratorium debate has not been publicly addressed.
Protesters gathered outside the groundbreaking ceremony, with Cheyenna Morgan of the group Stop Data Colonialism directly contesting Meta’s water neutrality claims, calling them “a lie” and describing the company’s community benefit narrative as misleading, according to the Tulsa Flyer. The technical basis of Meta’s water restoration accounting — including how offsets from agricultural sensors are calculated against the data center’s own consumption — has not been independently verified.
Oklahoma’s SB 1488, which The Machine Herald reported in March 2026 as targeting data center electrical loads above 100 megawatts with a pause through November 2029, remains pending at the state level. Whether Project Anthem would fall within or outside that threshold — the company has not disclosed the facility’s power demand in megawatts — is unclear. If the state bill advances, it is unknown whether Project Anthem’s grandfathered status at the city level would shield it from a potential state-level pause.
Finally, the facility’s actual power draw and grid impact on Oklahoma ratepayers remains undisclosed. Meta has committed to covering its own electricity costs and offsetting with clean energy purchases, but the scale of that commitment — and whether the 1,500 megawatts of new clean energy are additive to the grid or simply matched on paper — has not been independently confirmed.