By Dede Biles / Aug 29, 2024
Post & Courier
The $800 million Meta data center in Aiken County will include four buildings and an electrical substation.
A global technology giant announced plans Aug. 29 for an economic development project that will be one of the largest ever in Aiken County.
Facebook owner Meta has chosen Sage Mill Industrial Park in the Graniteville/Vaucluse area as the location for its first data center in South Carolina.
The investment of more than $800 million by the company will create more than 100 operational jobs, and there will be more than 1,000 skilled trade workers on site at the peak of the facility’s construction.
The data center will have a 715,000-square-foot campus, and its electricity use will be matched “with 100 percent renewable energy,” according to Meta.
“Aiken County is the perfect home for Meta for a variety of reasons — good access to infrastructure and renewable energy, a strong pool of talent, but… more importantly, an amazing set of community partners that have helped move this project along,” said Kevin Janda, the company’s director of data center strategy, during a media event at the Sage Valley Gun Club & Lodge.
In addition to Facebook, Meta is the owner and operator of Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, and it also offers other products and services.
The data center will be Meta’s 22nd such facility in this country and the 26th in the world.
“Meta’s Aiken data center will be optimized for our AI (artificial intelligence) workloads,” Janda said.
According Will Williams, president and CEO of the Western SC Economic Development Partnership, site development at Sage Mill Industrial Park has been underway for a couple of months.
“There will be a concerted effort to source labor and materials locally while providing substantial contributions directly to the community,” Janda said. “Our commitment here extends to the residents, small businesses, nonprofits and schools as well. Once this data center is operational, we’re going to be rolling out our community action grants program where we partner with schools and local organizations to put the power of technology to use for the community’s benefit and improvements in education.”
Janda said the data center "should be wrapping up construction in a few years, [by] spring 2027.”
The possibility of a large data center coming to Aiken County had been discussed publicly, but county and state officials were secretive about the company behind the proposed facility.
In April 2023, Aiken County Council approved the third and final readings of two ordinances that provided incentives for an economic development project that would “invest or cause to be invested, in the aggregate, at least $800 million.”
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