Meta’s Liquid Cooling Strategy 2025: A Deep Dive into the $65B AI Infrastructure Overhaul

Industry Adoption: Meta’s Pivot from Air to Liquid Cooling Redefines Data Center Infrastructure for the AI Era

Between 2021 and 2024, Meta Platforms initiated a foundational shift in its data center strategy, moving from a well-established reliance on efficient air and evaporative cooling to exploring advanced liquid cooling. This period was characterized by pilot programs and strategic planning, driven by the anticipated thermal challenges of next-generation AI hardware. Key signals included a 2022 collaboration with Iceotope to study precision immersion cooling for storage and the co-development of Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC) with Microsoft, a transitional technology designed to retrofit existing air-cooled facilities. By 2023, the company publicly stated its intention for all data centers to be liquid-cooled by 2030, and initial “AI-optimized” investments, such as the $800 million projects in Indiana and Minnesota, laid the groundwork for this transition. The opportunity was clear: use AI to optimize existing systems while pioneering hybrid cooling models to bridge the technology gap.

Beginning in 2025, this strategic exploration has transformed into aggressive, large-scale execution. The pivotal change is the commitment of a staggering $65 billion for a global AI data center expansion, a direct response to AI workloads pushing rack power densities from a legacy of ~20kW to an extreme 120-140kW. This inflection point marks a move beyond retrofitting and hybridization to designing new data centers with native liquid cooling from the ground up. The commercial applications are now widespread: AALC is a crucial “bridge” solution being actively deployed to integrate high-power GPUs into older facilities, while new builds in El Paso, Texas, and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, feature closed-loop and “dry cooling” systems, respectively. This variety demonstrates that liquid cooling is no longer a niche solution but a multi-faceted, commercially scaled technology essential for competitive AI infrastructure. The primary threat has shifted from technological obsolescence to managing the immense resource consumption and public scrutiny associated with this massive build-out.

Table: Meta’s Strategic Investments in AI-Ready Data Center Infrastructure

Table: Meta’s Ecosystem of Partnerships for Liquid Cooling and Data Center Expansion

Geography: Meta’s Expanding Liquid Cooling Footprint

Between 2021 and 2024, Meta’s geographical focus was on expanding its established data center footprint within the U.S. with “AI-optimized” facilities. This phase included significant $800 million investments in traditional data center hubs like Indiana (Jeffersonville), Minnesota (Rosemount), and South Carolina (Aiken County), alongside a major expansion in New Albany, Ohio. The announcement of a massive $10 billion, 2 GW campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, at the end of 2024 signaled a dramatic escalation in scale and a pivot toward regions capable of supporting next-generation power and cooling demands.

From 2025 onwards, Meta’s geographic strategy has become more targeted and technologically driven. The expansion is no longer just about adding capacity but about demonstrating leadership in sustainable operations, often in challenging environments. The selection of El Paso, Texas, for a $1.5 billion facility was a deliberate choice to deploy and validate closed-loop liquid cooling in an arid region, directly addressing water scarcity concerns. Similarly, the $1 billion investment in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, showcases a “dry cooling” system to eliminate water use for cooling entirely. This strategic site selection turns potential environmental liabilities into a showcase for innovation. The anticipated move into Alberta, Canada, with Pembina suggests an international extension of this strategy, seeking regions with robust energy infrastructure to power its AI ambitions. The underlying pattern is a shift from expanding in familiar territories to pioneering new regions where advanced cooling technology can mitigate environmental and regulatory risks, as highlighted by public backlash over water use at older facilities in Georgia.

Technology Maturity: Meta’s Evolution in Liquid Cooling

In the 2021–2024 period, Meta’s liquid cooling technology was in a transitional and exploratory phase. At the demonstration stage was the collaboration with Iceotope in 2022, which validated the feasibility of precision immersion cooling for storage drives. The primary commercial effort was the development of Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC) with Microsoft, a hybrid, retrofittable solution that was presented as a strategic roadmap rather than a fully scaled product. It allowed Meta to begin integrating liquid cooling without overhauling its entire air-cooled infrastructure. During this time, the scaled technology remained traditional air and evaporative cooling, which Meta continued to optimize using AI, achieving a 20% reduction in fan energy in a pilot.

The period from 2025 to today marks the maturation and diversification of Meta’s liquid cooling portfolio. AALC has moved from a pilot concept to a commercially scaled “bridge” technology, essential for deploying 120-140kW racks in data centers originally designed for only 20kW. More importantly, native liquid cooling has become the new commercial standard for greenfield projects. Technologies like the “closed-loop liquid cooling” system in El Paso and the “dry cooling” system in Beaver Dam are no longer experimental but are the baseline designs for new billion-dollar facilities. Further evidence of maturity is the development of in-house hardware like the “Clemente (1U)” liquid-cooled AI server, showing that Meta is now designing products around the cooling solution. Looking forward, the development of 1-megawatt water-cooled racks represents the next frontier, currently in the advanced demo or early pilot stage, signaling the next leap in power density that the industry must prepare for.

Table: SWOT Analysis of Meta’s Liquid Cooling Strategy

Forward-Looking Insights and Summary

Meta’s journey into liquid cooling has rapidly evolved from strategic planning to aggressive, large-scale execution, fundamentally reshaping the energy and infrastructure landscape for AI. The data from 2025 clearly signals that the company is no longer just experimenting; it is deploying a multi-pronged strategy to build and finance the next generation of data centers at a pace and scale that will challenge competitors. This pivot is a masterclass in confronting the extreme thermal and power demands of artificial intelligence head-on.

For energy executives, investors, and strategists, several key signals should be monitored closely in the year ahead. First, the execution of the $65 billion expansion will be paramount; watch for new site announcements and the speed at which these advanced liquid-cooled facilities come online. Second, the operational performance of the new Texas and Wisconsin data centers will be a critical proof point for Meta’s water-positive ambitions and a bellwether for sustainable data center design. Third, the innovative joint venture with Blue Owl Capital could become an industry-standard financing model for managing immense capital expenditures, so observe whether Meta replicates this with other financial partners. Finally, keep an eye on any announcements regarding the pilot or deployment of 1-megawatt rack technology, as this will signal the next seismic shift in data center density and power requirements. Meta’s actions provide a clear playbook for the future, but its success hinges on flawlessly executing this complex symphony of capital, technology, and resource management.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Meta shifting from air to liquid cooling for its data centers?
The primary driver for Meta’s shift to liquid cooling is the extreme heat generated by next-generation AI hardware. As AI workloads push server rack power densities from a legacy of ~20kW up to 120-140kW, traditional air cooling is no longer sufficient. Liquid cooling is essential to manage these high thermal loads, prevent hardware from overheating, and maintain a competitive edge in AI compute capability.

What are the different types of liquid cooling technologies Meta is deploying?
Meta is deploying a multi-faceted liquid cooling strategy. This includes: 1) Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC), a hybrid system to retrofit older, air-cooled data centers. 2) Closed-loop liquid cooling, used in its El Paso facility to operate with zero water for most of the year. 3) Dry cooling, a technology being implemented in its Wisconsin data center to completely eliminate water use for cooling. This diverse approach allows Meta to customize solutions for different environments and facility types.

How is Meta addressing the environmental concerns, especially water usage, of this massive expansion?
Meta is actively addressing environmental concerns by making water stewardship a central part of its strategy. New data centers in arid regions like El Paso are being built with closed-loop systems that use minimal to no water. Its Wisconsin facility will use ‘dry cooling’ to achieve zero water demand. Additionally, Meta has a corporate goal to be ‘water-positive’ by 2030 and partners with organizations like Ducks Unlimited to fund water restoration projects that offset its consumption.

What is the significance of the $65 billion investment and the Blue Owl Capital partnership?
The $65 billion capital commitment signifies Meta’s aggressive, large-scale execution of its AI infrastructure strategy, moving beyond pilot programs to a full global build-out. The partnership with Blue Owl Capital is a key financial innovation; it creates a joint venture that allows Meta to finance and develop massive new data centers ‘off-balance sheet’ through lease agreements. This helps manage the immense capital expenditure required for the expansion without putting all the financial burden directly on Meta’s balance sheet.

What is Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC) and why is it important?
Air-Assisted Liquid Cooling (AALC) is a hybrid cooling approach, co-developed by Meta and Microsoft, that integrates direct-to-chip liquid cooling into existing data centers that were originally designed for air cooling. It’s important because it serves as a crucial ‘bridge’ technology, allowing Meta to upgrade its vast portfolio of older facilities to handle the high heat of modern GPUs without requiring a complete and costly teardown and rebuild.