“This is the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale, but it won’t be the last.”
That gushing line is from Alberta’s technology minister, not Meta, which tells you who is more excited about this deal. A $13 billion data center burns enormous amounts of power and water, and Alberta is handing over the land to win the AI arms race. The province gets a photo op and some construction jobs. Meta gets the compute, and the ongoing utility bill lands on everyone else’s grid.