Facebook parent Meta Platforms said on Wednesday it would invest more than $13 billion Canadian ($9.2 billion US) to build its first data centre in Canada, designed to support the company's artificial intelligence workloads.

The company is breaking ground on the new one-gigawatt, AI-optimized data centre in Sturgeon County, in the western Canadian province of Alberta to help power AI innovations and core products.

The project, the 33rd in its global fleet, is expected to support over 3,000 construction workers onsite at the peak of construction. The data centre will support more than 300 operational jobs.

As part of the project, Meta also said it plans to invest around $60 million in local infrastructure improvements that will benefit the local community, and provide grants and funding to local nonprofits.

Meta said it pays the full costs of data centres' energy use as well as water and wastewater service required to support data centres, so consumers aren't negatively impacted.

AI-driven data centres can strain local electricity and water supplies and trigger disputes over land, climate impacts and who benefits locally from the infrastructure burden.