Meta Platforms will invest around $10 billion to build its first data center in Canada as the company expands its infrastructure to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.

The Sturgeon County, Alberta-based data center will have one gigawatt of power capacity — the equivalent of the power used by around 750,000 homes — and will be largely run on natural gas-fired power. Meta said it’s funding the new electrical generation, which will be connected to Alberta’s grid.

The facility will require 3,000 construction workers, and once complete, will create 300 full-time jobs, Meta said in a statement on Wednesday. The data center will be Meta’s largest outside the U.S., according to Gary Demasi, Meta’s vice president of data center development and strategy.

The company is expanding its global data center footprint to secure more computing capacity. The Alberta project marks the 33rd data center in its fleet. Meta plans to use the computing power for its own AI models and social media apps, including Instagram and Facebook, but it’s also exploring setting up a cloud business that could sell some of that capacity to other companies.

While Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said the company plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure in the U.S. before the end of the decade, Canada has recently sought to lure investment north of the border.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected last year on a pledge to make the country “the best place in the world to build data centers.” The country has vast reserves of relatively cheap natural gas as well as hydropower.

The largest projects are concentrated in Alberta, the source of most of the country’s oil and gas production. Last year, Carney agreed to lift clean electricity rules and emissions limits that Alberta said hindered its power industry.

Meta’s latest data center announcement comes after Canadian midstream company Pembina Pipeline Corp. and partners Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management said they would move ahead with a $3.2 billion gas-fired electricity plant in Sturgeon County. Meta confirmed the plant will support its data center.

The only water required for the project will be for domestic uses, fire protection and some equipment maintenance, Demasi said.

Alberta has attracted as much as 200 billion Canadian dollars ($141 billion) of potential investment in data centers, Premier Danielle Smith said at a news conference.

A firm backed by Canadian businessman and television personality Kevin O’Leary wants to build a 7.5-gigawatt data center called Wonder Valley about 480 kilometers from the provincial capital of Edmonton. Data District, a division of Swiss-based manager Alcral, has partnered with another company on a proposal for multiple data centers in the province.

“The global race for computing power is ramping up like never before driven by demand from artificial intelligence,” Smith said.

Alberta-based Capital Power said it has entered into a long-term energy supply agreement for 250 megawatts of power for the Meta data center.

“We fully expect this is a watermark moment for the industry in the province and we expect to see more projects coming in behind this as a result,” Capital Power CEO Avik Dey said in an interview. “This project in many ways validates Canada and Alberta as a viable jurisdiction for AI compute. I cannot understate the importance of this moment in that regard.”