In July, Meta Platforms — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp that’s making a big push into AI — announced that it had broken ground on its first AI data centre in Canada.
The 1GW data centre will be located in Sturgeon County, Alberta and Meta said it is investing over $13 billion CAD towards the project, which will support over 3,000 jobs during construction and over 300 jobs when operational.
As is commonplace now with data centre developments, there is little transparency on even simple details such as the address and ownership structure — by the owner, developer, and even the government. All that has been stated in the public announcements is that the data centre will be located somewhere north of Edmonton.
According to Data Center Map, however, the location is 56111 Range Road 223. Using that address, The Realist was then able to identify the exact legal parcels that make up the site and confirmed details of the land sale with transaction info shared with The Realist by Alberta-based commercial real estate data firm The Network.
According to the Government of Alberta, the site spans about 1,750 acres. Transaction reports indicate that the site is made up of the following three contiguous parcels:
Hwy 643 & RR 222 (Legal Description: W-1/2-11-56-22-W4)
Size: 956.89 acres
Sale Price: $163,727,616
Vendor: 1598313 Alberta Ltd.
RR 222 South of Hwy 643 (Legal Description: SE-10-56-20-W4 (2 parts))
Size: 160.00 acres
Sale Price: $27,379,200
Vendor: Pembina Pipeline Corporation (TSX: PPL)
Hwy 643 & RR 223 (Legal Description: W-1/2-10-56-22-W4 (3 parts))
Size: 636.91 acres
Sale Price: $108,986,328
Vendor: Suncor Energy Inc. (TSX: SU)
Parcel 2 was acquired by Pembina Pipeline Corporation, which also appears to have been the vendor for Parcel 1, as the corporate directors for both holding companies are different individuals affiliated with Pembina and both holding companies share a business address matching that of Pembina. In a July press release, Pembina also disclosed that it sold land associated with the data centre project for $190 million, which is what the sale prices for the first two parcels add up to.
All three parcels were acquired by Vibro Information Services Ltd. on February 6, 2026 at a price of around $171,100 per acre for an aggregate total of $300,093,144 for 1,753.80 acres.
Every year, the Government of Alberta grants a select number of exemptions that allow foreign entities to own more than 20 acres of land in Alberta. As reported by various news outlets in recent months, Vibro Information Services Ltd. was one of the entities that received an exemption.
Vibro Information Services Ltd. has not been directly connected to Meta Platforms, but the corporate director and business address matches that of law firm Stikeman Elliott, which announced its involvement with Meta’s Sturgeon County data centre project in July saying that it advised Meta “across all aspects of the project, including energy project development and electricity supply; land acquisition; including foreign ownership of land compliance; municipal, development, servicing and construction agreements; and corporate and tax matters.”
Meta Platforms’ business model has also been to own and operate its own data centres. The Realist reached out to Meta and Stikeman Elliot earlier this week, but has not received a response.
The Sturgeon Data Centre
The development permit was approved a month before ground broke and the build out of the Sturgeon Data Centre will be led by Frost Collective, a joint venture between Clark Builders and PCL Construction, with Clark as Managing Partner.
Across the world, the pushback against data centres has been growing, particularly around aspects such as water use and energy needs.
According to an FAQ for the project, Meta says it “has been working closely with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capital Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator to plan for our energy needs years in advance, paying the full costs for the energy used by our data centre, so consumers are not negatively impacted” and is also “working closely with Sturgeon County to pay the full cost of water and wastewater service for our data centre.”
“Our goal is to be water positive in 2030, when Meta will restore more water to local watersheds than we consume globally where Meta has owned operations,” added Meta. “Meta is working to identify and contract new clean energy projects within the region to match our data centre’s electricity use. Meta matches all its annual electricity use with 100% clean and renewable energy.”
The Sturgeon County data centre will utilize “a water efficient closed-loop system that recirculates a water mixture through data halls to efficiently absorb and transfer heat from high-density computing hardware” and “The heat is removed from the closed-loop system with dry cooling, where no operational water use is required.”
The data centre will also be supported by the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a 932 MW natural-gas power plant project backed by the aforementioned Pembina Pipeline Corporation alongside Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor.
The data centre is set to become operational in 2028-2029 while the Greenlight Electricity Centre is set to come online in 2030.
And Carney lent a couple of lucky independant power producers up to $200M to supply LNG to grid to power META AI surveillance centre for a few years while pedophile enabler Zuckerberg builds his. How much of that loan will be forgiven?