Meta Executive Warns Midterm Backlash Could Slow Data Center Growth

Meta president Dina Powell McCormick said Democratic wins in the midterm elections will make it harder for companies to build data centers, acknowledging the industry has "not done as good a job as we needed to explain the benefits of these investments."

Speaking at the WSJ Tech conference on Wednesday, Powell McCormick said backlash against data centers - a prominent issue during the election season - is tied to how people feel about AI overall. "The visible sort of manifestation of AI is a data center, and it's something that people can say, 'I don't want this in my community,'" she said. "I think there's an underlying bigger issue, which is how people feel about AI in general."

Meta believes it can turn around negative sentiment by demonstrating the value of both the data centers and the technology itself. Powell McCormick said the company has built data centers for 20 years and now operates them in 23 states, with five planned as projects of 1 gigawatt or more, including one in Texas.

She described the approach Meta uses to close local deals: paying for its own electricity, directing tax surpluses toward teachers and first responders, keeping the labor force local, and securing bipartisan support. Going forward, she expects projects to face more review and to be weighed against whether constituents actually want them.

Meta has pinned hopes on its AI investments, including its consumer AI agent Muse, scaling beyond its current 10 million users. Even if that doesn't pan out, Powell McCormick said the compute itself will be valuable: "We're getting calls every day to lease that compute [we've built], and so one way or another, we're seeing a path to monetization."

Source: TechCrunch