One of the largest social media companies in the world, Facebook announced Dec. 8 it will up its investment in a Fort Worth data center to a combined $1.5 billion.

The latest project at the Fort Worth location, located at 5000 Like Way, will add an additional 170,000 square feet of space to the existing data center. Construction will continue through 2022, according to a company announcement.

“This new addition will be part of our global data center infrastructure and will serve as what we call cold storage,” the company said. “It will operate similarly to the rest of the data center but will store posts and photos that are older or accessed less frequently.”

Documents from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation show a minimum investment of $25 million in the construction portion of the company’s latest expansion project in Fort Worth.

According to the announcement, the Fort Worth facility has been under continuous construction since Facebook broke ground at the site in 2015. At its peak, the project employed upward of 1,200 construction personnel. The company expects anywhere from 150-200 full-time employees and contractors will work at the site once the expansion is complete.


The goal of the expansion project is to preserve user data in a more “sustainable and efficient way,” the announcement said. Servers at the data center will be powered on, as needed, when Facebook users access older photos, such as those used for Throwback Thursday posts and other content.

“Fort Worth has been a great location for our data center which helped make our decision to add this facility,” the announcement said. “Thank you to the city of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, the AllianceTexas community and all of our partners for helping us continue to grow our presence in the area.”