Laura Warren, Community Development Regional Manager for Meta
June 30 @ 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and other social media platforms, is building an $800 million data center in the Sage Mill Industrial Park.
Laura Warren, Meta’s Community Development Regional Manager, brought the importance of data centers to the personal level. She explained that everything an individual does on their computer or smartphone is processed in a data center to be shared as intended.
“If you ask AI to envision you on a beach with a margarita, and then it sends you back a picture, that information isn’t processed on your phone,” she explained. “It is processed behind the scenes at one of our data centers, which has thousands and thousands of servers. Each server that we have, we have tens of thousands in each of our data centers, can hold more information and process more information than the entire Library of Congress holds.”
She said Meta currently has 28 data centers globally, with 24 of them in the U.S. She said a number of factors brought the company to Aiken County, including a “shovel-ready” site, infrastructure and zoning in place, and a strong pool of local talent from which to hire.
Another factor was access to reliable and renewable energy. Data centers have been a target of criticism for the amount of power they require. “That’s why,” said Warren, “Meta puts an emphasis on building sustainable data centers.”
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