Meta’s Hyperion AI data center will sprawl to four times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park

Meta has quietly purchased roughly 1,400 acres—an area almost twice the size of Manhattan’s Central Park—adjacent to its already-mammoth 2,250-acre Hyperion AI data center site in Richland Parish, La., Fortune has learned. The combined land parcels for the campus will bring the project to more than twice the size of the nearest international airport, Louis Armstrong in New Orleans.

According to half a dozen people affiliated with companies working on or around the Meta site, the land purchase paves the way for a phase 2 expansion of the Hyperion project, which has been widely discussed, including by President Donald Trump, as one of the nation’s largest AI data centers in the works. 

Fortune observed active work underway on the newly acquired land, which several sources say was purchased from local landowner George B. Franklin & Sons roughly three to four months ago. Fortune visited the Richland Parish Assessor’s office, where staffers shared paperwork that said the parcel is still listed in Franklin’s name—though they emphasized it can take some time for the filed deed to be updated. 

Activity on the land, which lies west of the original site, included utility markings, heavy equipment, on-site workers, and portable facilities—signs consistent with early-stage site preparation. Permits were posted, but could not be read from the publicly accessi...