Fifteen minutes after Susan Bourgeois was appointed to lead Louisiana Economic Development, the state agency responsible for strengthening business growth, she got her first data center pitch.
“I was pulled aside in the lobby of the Hilton hotel by the CEO of Entergy Louisiana, who said, ‘We have a project and need to talk,'” Bourgeois said.
It was a proposal from Meta to build one of the largest-ever AI data centers in the world. Bourgeois jumped on it. Data centers, which are large warehouses full of servers that power parts of the internet and increasingly artificial intelligence, infuse massive amounts of capital into communities and are much needed in rural areas where populations are declining, she said.
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