Long Among America’s Poorest States, Louisiana Tops $250 Billion in New Investment

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A post on X by the Louisiana account Coastal (@thelacoast) listing more than $300 billion in planned and active projects in Louisiana is drawing attention, and state records back most of it: Gov. Jeff Landry said in August that SpaceX’s $100 billion Starbase Louisiana announcement “pushes our state beyond $250 billion in new investment.”

“This is not normal what is happening in Louisiana right now,” the post said.

The biggest projects

SpaceX announced Starbase Louisiana on Aug. 25 for 125,000 acres near Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, Fox Businessreported. Construction is set to start in 2027, with a first launch targeted for 2029. The company projects 3,000 direct jobs over 10 years averaging $92,600 a year, plus more than 8,100 indirect jobs. Landry called it “a day for the history books” in a post on X.

Meta’s Hyperion AI data center in Richland Parish is under construction and now stands at $50 billion, up from $10 billion when it was announced in December 2024, WRKF reported. Amazon raised its planned northwest Louisiana data center investment to $18 billion across three campuses in Caddo and Bossier parishes, Louisiana Economic Developmentannounced in August. Hut 8 is building an AI data center in West Feliciana Parish worth up to $10 billion, and Applied Digital has a $3.6 billion campus planned near Boyce.

Gas, steel and ammonia

The natural gas buildout along the coast is just as large. Woodside’s $17.5 billion Louisiana LNG plant near Lake Charles is under construction. Venture Global’s CP2 terminal in Cameron Parish reached a final investment decision in July 2025 with $15.1 billion in financing, and Commonwealth LNG, a roughly $13 billion project, reached its decision in May. Venture Global’s $18 billion Plaquemines expansion and the $18 billion Argent LNG terminal at Port Fourchon are still in development.

Hyundai Steel picked Donaldsonville for a $5.8 billion mill, announced alongside President Trump in March 2025. CF Industries and its Japanese partners are building a $4 billion ammonia plant at the same site. Shintech announced a $3.4 billion expansion in Iberville Parish in March.

The LNG projects owe a great deal to Washington. On his first day back in office, Trump ended the Biden administration’s 2024 pause on new LNG export permits, Gas Processing News reported, and Commonwealth’s export approval was the first issued after the pause ended.

From the bottom of the rankings

The boom is landing in a state that has spent half a century near the bottom. Louisiana’s median household income ranked 48th in 2023, the same place it held in 1970, according to an Urban Institute analysis reported by The Lens. Census figures released in September put the state’s three-year poverty rate at 19.7 percent, the highest in the nation, WAFBreported. U.S. News ranked Louisiana 50th among the states in 2025.

The schools have turned first. On the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, Louisiana’s fourth graders climbed from 50th in reading in 2019 to 16th, and the state’s overall rank rose to 32nd, its best ever, the American Press reported. Louisiana was the only state where fourth-grade reading scores beat pre-pandemic levels, Axios reported. A Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth scorecard released in May ranked Louisiana first in the nation for reading growth and second for math. “Louisiana is leading again, and this is only the beginning!” Landry said.

The gains began with a back-to-basics reading push under state Superintendent Cade Brumley, appointed in 2020. “Teaching children to read should not be complicated,” Brumley said. Landry added the LA GATOR education savings accounts, which drew about 39,000 applications in their first year, and state test scores hit a record high this summer, the Louisiana Department of Education reported.

Open for business

In late 2024, Landry and the Legislature passed a tax overhaul that set a flat 3 percent income tax, a flat 5.5 percent corporate tax and repealed the corporate franchise tax, the Tax Foundation reported. Louisiana has since climbed to 31st on the foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index, from 40th before the reforms. “We wanted to make our state more competitive, so we can attract more jobs and have higher wages,” Landry said.

In 2025, Landry signed insurance and tort reform bills to curb what he called “frivolous lawsuits driven by trial lawyers,” WBRZ reported. He also overhauled Louisiana Economic Development so the state could, in Secretary Susan Bourgeois’ words, “compete at the speed of business.”

The population has grown two years in a row after earlier losses, though more residents still move to other states than arrive from them, Fox 8 reported.

Checking the numbers

Some of the post’s figures are rounded or out of date. The Louisiana International Terminal in St. Bernard Parish is a $1.8 billion project, not $3 billion, and the Entergy power plants for Meta were reported at about $11 billion, not $13 billion. A $10 billion figure for a Cameron LNG expansion could not be confirmed. More than $150 billion of the total, including SpaceX, has not reached a final investment decision.

A second post, by the X account @datarade, claimed a national “$1+ trillion” mega-project pipeline, and its list has bigger problems. A $200 billion “Datacenter Alley West” in the Pacific Northwest does not appear in any company announcement or news report. Intel has committed $28 billion to its Ohio fabs, not $100 billion. Other entries hold up or understate the case: TSMC’s Arizona commitment is $165 billion, Micron’s New York megafab is up to $100 billion, and Samsung’s Taylor, Texas, fab is $44 billion.

The bottom line

Louisiana has been told for 50 years that it is a poor state with weak schools and a hostile business climate, and the rankings said so. In a few years it has moved from last to the middle of the pack in reading, cut its income tax to a flat 3 percent, taken on the trial lawyers and drawn more than a quarter-trillion dollars in announced investment. The school turnaround began before Landry took office, and he built on it with school choice while making the state a place companies want to build. Washington’s decision to end the LNG permit freeze did the rest for the export terminals.

The figures should be cited accurately, because the real ones are strong enough. Louisiana’s job now is to get the planned projects to final investment decisions, keep permits moving and make sure the power grid is ready for what is coming.

Sources