Amazon plans to invest roughly $12 billion in data center campuses across Caddo and Bossier Parishes in northwest Louisiana, with STACK Infrastructure named as the developer and owner of the sites. Louisiana Economic Development and STACK both describe a coordinated, multi-site build rather than a single hall, spanning both sides of the Red River.
Neither release states a capacity figure. There is no megawatt number, no building count, no rack density and no indication of which AWS regions or availability zones the campuses will serve, so the size of the facility can only be inferred from the capital number. A published IT load, or a filed interconnection request, would settle it.
On power, Amazon says it has worked with Southwestern Electric Power Company so that it pays 100 percent of the costs associated with the campuses, covering new energy infrastructure and the upgrades needed to serve them. Louisiana Economic Development and CNBC both carry that arrangement in the same terms, and the state release adds that the work also improves reliability for other SWEPCO customers. What is not public is the contract structure behind it, meaning the tariff, the term, or whether a special large-load rate applies.
STACK's own release goes further on scope, saying the project will fund all infrastructure costs associated with the campuses, including water, wastewater, electrical and related system upgrades. CNBC reports Amazon will put up to $400 million into public water infrastructure and will draw only surplus water from the surrounding area, cooling with outside air where conditions allow.
Timing is near term. The state says construction is expected to begin within weeks, with operations coming online in phases across several years, which puts first capacity well beyond the current procurement cycle for anyone shopping for space in the region now.
Louisiana's incentive package is a matter of record and worth reading if you are modelling the cost base. It includes LED FastStart workforce training, and the state expects Amazon to take part in its High Impact Jobs programme and its Data Center Sales Tax Exemption.
On headcount, the state and Amazon both put permanent on-site employment at 540 roles, covering electricians, HVAC technicians, project engineers, network specialists, operations managers and security specialists. STACK's release words the same figure as more than 540. The two documents also give different construction-employment numbers, so that figure is left out here.
For scale, CNBC notes Amazon told investors this month it expects around $200 billion of capital expenditure across the year, more than any other hyperscaler, and that Meta has already sited its Hyperion campus in the state through a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital valued at $27 billion. Northwest Louisiana is becoming a second concentration point in a state that already hosts one of the largest AI builds in the country.
For buyers, the practical takeaway is that capacity in northwest Louisiana will be contracted through STACK rather than through Amazon, since STACK owns the campuses it is building. For engineers planning around SWEPCO, the load additions are real and funded, but nothing published so far tells you how much of that grid capacity is being reserved or when each phase energises.
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