U.S. Technology giant Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: $META) is planning to build its first artificial intelligence (A.I.) data centre in Canada.

In a blog post, Meta said that it is building a one-gigawatt data centre in Alberta that will cost the company $9 billion U.S. and take three years to construct.

It will be Meta's 33rd data centre and comes as the company rapidly expands to meet demand for A.I. infrastructure and services.

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Alberta is viewed as an attractive spot for development due to the province's energy resources and friendly regulatory environment.

The Meta data centre will be located in Sturgeon County, Alberta outside Edmonton. It is an area that is zoned for industrial use.

Meta Platforms, which is best known for its social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, also recently announced a new cloud computing business.

The growth and pivot into new business areas comes as Meta struggles to catch-up to A.I. leaders such as Anthropic and Google parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ: $GOOGL).

Meta has forecast that it will spend up to $145 billion U.S. in capital expenditures on A.I. this year. Meta is also racing to compete against Microsoft (NASDAQ: $MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: $AMZN) in cloud computing.

In the blog post, Meta said that the Alberta data centre will support more than 3,000 construction jobs at its peak and will involve local investments.

The company led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it is working with Alberta energy firms, including Altalink, Capitol Power, and the Alberta Electric System Operator.

META stock is down 18% over the last 12 months and trading at $603.12 U.S. per share.