Meta’s mega data center in Kuna on track to be completed by 2025

Imagine two enormously long buildings situated side-by-side, each measuring up to eight football fields in length and collectively housing 700,000 data servers. In terms of sheer size, Meta’s future Kuna Data Center can be classified as nothing short of mega.

Slated to be completed in 2025, and encompassing 960,000 square feet of facility space, the behemoth of a project is running right on schedule, if not ahead, according to Jay Larsen, Meta’s community development manager for the west region.

“When we turn this up this coming year, this will be, for a moment, the most innovative data center, and the most technologically advanced data center on the planet,” Larsen said.

Larsen shared this “byte” of data and other key project details during an “inside baseball” look at the site as a guest speaker during the recent Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) monthly meeting and luncheon.

Construction at the Kuna site is moving quite quickly.

“Three months ago, the video I am showing would have only reflected about half of what is taking place,” Larsen said.

Before taking on his current role, Larsen headed up the Idaho Technology Council (ITC).

“I’ve been at Meta since last December and I am so impressed with the amount of knowledge and the speed of delivery that takes place even for a company the size of Meta,” he said.

With an investment in the ballpark of $1 billion, the new site in Kuna represents Meta’s 15th data center in the U.S., and 19th globally. Data centers, he said are “fundamental” to what Meta does.

“Everything we do has to touch a data center. Whether it’s any of our products, Facebook, Instagram, Llama 3, which works to encode language efficiently, they all have to come through a data center.”

However, Larsen was also quick to point out the blinding evolutionary speed at which technology, specifically artificial intelligence, continues to develop, advancements that created some modifications along the way for the mega-sized project.

“This new center was approved and then Meta put a pause on it,” Larsen said. “We decided to redesign it and make the center more efficient. We pressed the pause button for about eight months.”

Keeping up with AI was the crucial aspect to developing the future data center.

“AI in our book is going to be transformative in a way to help us become much more engaged quicker,” he said. “Change comes fast and as the free market runs and dictates things, like what Meta is able to do with a lot of different products and services, that is where data centers come in.”

Reflecting on his career that began 40 years ago during the old telecom industry days, that featured landlines and call-waiting, he recalled technology was moving at a “snail’s pace.”

“Now, you make the change where every five years, the element of change is driving exponentially what is happening to the point where we are using AI for so many different things.”

Plus, he shared that technological changes must also be accompanied by additional advancements to keep the new developments operating efficiently. Most critical is the access to reliable and renewable energy.

“As you get an AI server ready, it demands a lot more electricity,” he said. “Energy is monstrous. Energy is one of the biggest driving sources. It’s fundamental in everything we do.”

Larsen said he believes Meta proudly designs, builds and operates some of the “most sustainable data centers” in the world. In Kuna, the tech giant is working closely with Idaho Power, whom he referred to as a “great community partner” to help achieve this goal.

“The sustainability of energy is really important. This center will be supported by 100% renewable energy and will add 200 megawatts of renewable energy to the state,” he said.

In fact, Meta has an entire team devoted to the topic of energy, including the use of water as part of a closed-loop cooling system.

“The heat that comes off an AI server is amazingly high,” he said. “And the way we help cool things like this is much more efficient than what it was couple of years ago.”

Meta aims to be “water positive” by 2030, meaning the company intends to put back the same amount of water that will be used at the site.

“Our aim is to minimize water and to restore more water than we consume,” Larsen said. “The amount of water we first said we would use with the project in 2022 is significantly less today due to the closed-loop cooling system. Energy is the big one for us.”

Other water-saving measures he touched on include the use of landscaping with native and drought-resistant plants, capturing rainwater onsite, water-saving fixtures and technologies to be utilized throughout the center, and the use of treated wastewater for non-edible crop irrigation.

All factors that demonstrate Meta’s commitment to becoming and maintaining a sound reputation as a solid community partner, he said.

“Our community development and economic development teams work extensively to find out how we can do things in a new community,” he said. “Do we have all the solutions? Absolutely not.”

But one solution Meta eagerly took part in was the development of a water treatment facility. At a cost of about $100 million, it’s the first such project Meta has ever built.

“We did not have one in the area and had to create it,” Larsen said. “And we’ve transferred water rights, land, the whole facility over to the city of Kuna.”

From a corporate perspective, the water treatment plant project is reflective of the six guiding factors Larsen highlighted, criteria Meta focuses on when looking for a new community in which to build: Partnership, economics, speed, location, network and power.

“Meta is all about making sure we build community and make it stronger because we are here,” he said. “This is what we look for. And Idaho and Kuna have been a great partner. Bringing a data center like this here helps bring more resources and internet providers, other businesses here.”

While certain states can be more difficult to work with, he said Idaho is just the opposite, a major factor in Meta’s decision to build in Kuna.

“At the end of the day, it’s about being able to build strong partners like with Idaho Power, where we can have a really good workforce and strong political relationships,” Larsen said. “It’s a balance of all these factors. We’re proud to have all these projects and really proud to be a part of Idaho.”

Along with helping to enhance an array of other business locally, Meta’s presence will also have an impact on the local education community, particularly in the areas of STEM and digital literacy.

“One of our objectives for the Kuna School District is to make it one of the most innovative districts in the state of Idaho,” Larsen said. “When Meta comes into an area, we want to invest a lot of money to make digital literacy stronger, to make the community more connected.”

When completed, the new Kuna site will be home to about 100 full-time Meta employees. From a hiring perspective, Larsen said Meta will simply look for the best and most talented workers available.

“It can go in any direction. If we can find the talent here in Idaho, that is what we will go with,” he said.

And no matter where the talent emerges, Larsen told those gathered for the luncheon that he is certain of one thing: “Technology will continue to escalate at an extraordinary pace.”

“Imagine 10 years from now what is going to be happening,” he said. “This is where the infrastructure that takes place, that used to be monopoly-driven, is all open-source, like Llama 3. If you take a look at some of the other technologies developed over the last several decades, open source is leading the industry.”

When it comes to evolving technology, he acknowledged Meta is by far not the only player in the game.

“Everyone is in on the race to control, manage and manipulate data,” he said. “The way that we see and the way that we manage things today will be entirely different five years from now. If you don’t get ahead of the curve, that wave is going to run over the top of you.”

But Kuna’s future data center is prepared to keep advancing at what Larsen called a “10-X” clip or pace.

“The monetization of data and the control of data has seen an explosion in the last 12 months. Our CEO Mark Zuckerberg said we are going to accelerate what we are doing, and we’re going to 10-X it.”

And in the process, Meta intends to maintain its mission “to give people the power to build community and to bring the world closer together.”

“We want to make it so we can talk more with our family and our friends, with our business partners,” Larsen said. “It’s how things come together. The Kunda Data Center will be part of Meta’s global infrastructure that brings our technologies and services to life.”