Meta Lulea data center, Norrbotten County, Sweden

Meta's Lulea data center in Norrbotten, a coastal region in northern Sweden, opened its first server hall in 2013, the company's first data center outside the United States; a second hall followed in 2014. The site is cooled with outside air and runs on hydroelectric power, which Facebook said was reliable enough to let it cut backup generators by more than 70 percent. In May 2018 Meta announced a third server hall and an expansion of an existing building, and Lulea's mayor, Niklas Nordstrom, said the town had made sure there was land and energy for it to grow.

The campus grew on the promise of jobs. Early projections ran to 30,000 jobs, but by 2020 the halls employed 56 people on maintenance and service work, the Finnish broadcaster Yle reported. Thomas Lovgren, an editor at the Swedish paper NSD who had followed the site for years, said it had turned out differently from what was promised, counting the 8.7 billion kronor of company money and state support against it.

A Swedish government evaluation published October 31, 2017 put the wider effect at about 240 new jobs in the region, with more work every third year when equipment is replaced, and recorded state investment support awarded in 2011 and 2014 against a total investment of nearly 11 billion kronor. Goran Lattman of the agency Tillvaxtverket said the support was granted while the company was weighing several locations, and that the site had since made the region more attractive for similar investment.

Meta's own September 2026 fact sheet puts its investment in Lulea at more than 8.7 billion kronor and says the campus supports more than 300 operational jobs. It says Meta has given more than 31 million kronor to nonprofits, schools and community initiatives in Lulea and Norrbotten since 2012, through more than 210 grants and sponsorships.