THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
For the first time, your social media posts might be passing through Huntsville.
Facebook announced Wednesday that its data center in Huntsville – an investment of more than $1 billion – is online.
It’s a culmination from the 2018 announcement that the social media giant would be opening a data center in the Rocket City. The Facebook campus is located in North Huntsville Industrial Park.
To celebrate the achievement, Facebook also announced a $300,000 donation to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville to provide Space Camp scholarships for local students who might not be able to afford it. The donation push- es Facebook community grants to $2.2 million in the Huntsville area since announcing plans to build the data center.
“We are so excited to officially announce the Facebook Huntsville Data Center is online and serving traffic,” said Katie Comer, a Facebook com- munity development regional manager. “We are officially online. When we broke ground in 2018, one of the things we said when we were coming to town is we wanted to pro- vide long-term support and long-term vitality in the community where we work.”
Facebook, which also owns Instagram, has brought two buildings of its data center campus online Wednesday. Con- struction continues on three other buildings and there will eventually be six buildings at the data center handling traffic.
Once all buildings are online, more than 200 people are expected to be working at the data center.
The data center will ultimately cover 2.5 million square feet and be completely supported by renewable energy with 227 megawatts of solar energy added to the Alabama electrical grid.
Facebook has sup- ported Huntsville-area schools during construction, focusing on what’s known as STEM courses – science, technology, engineering and math. It’s a natural fit for Huntsville, which is home to the Alabama School of Cyber Technology & Engineering. Facebook, in fact, donated $100,000 to the statewide magnet school earlier this year.
Facebook has also opened applications to its 2022 Community Action Grants, which the company described as grants supporting “projects that meet the needs of our communities by harnessing the power of technology for community benefit, connecting people online or off and improving local STEM education.