Just when you thought the AI data center boom couldn\u2019t get any crazier, Meta has gone and built data centers in tents. The strategy appears to borrow in equal parts from Tesla and xAI.<\/p>\n
In a bid to cut construction time in half, Meta has built six tents \u2014 or \u201crapid deployment structures\u201d as the company describes them \u2014\u00a0outside of New Albany, Ohio, according to Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview<\/a>, which tracks data center deployments.<\/p>\n Thomas\u2019 findings aren\u2019t totally new. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to The Information<\/a> last year about his plan to use weatherproof tents to house the company\u2019s multi-gigawatt data centers.<\/p>\n But Thomas\u2019 images and review of local permits showcase the speed of construction and scale of the project. According to city permits reviewed by Thomas, Meta started building five 125,000-square-foot tents between April and June. The satellite images he shared in his post on X show the structures have all been built.<\/p>\n The use of tents is reminiscent of those Tesla built in the parking lot of its Fremont, California factory when it was rushing to roll out the Model 3. The site is also powered by 200 megawatts of modular gas turbines<\/a> nearby, a tactic popularized by competitor xAI.<\/p>\n Inside the tents, AI chips, likely worth billions of dollars, will go about their business.<\/p>\n Meta is building dozens of massive tents at campuses across the US, sticking billions of dollars of chips inside, and powering them with off-grid turbines. <\/p>\n The AI race has officially entered its Mad Max phase.<\/p>\n Over the last month, I reviewed hundreds of documents and satellite\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/U8yDZUlEO0<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) June 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n The tents have sprung up as Meta has struggled to release its AI models to developers. A recent report<\/a> in The Wall Street Journal found that Meta\u2019s latest model, Muse Spark, is complete, but the APIs that developers rely on to access it have been repeatedly delayed.<\/p>\n Meta has said it intends to spend up to $145 billion on data centers and other capital expenditures. Wall Street hasn\u2019t liked the sound of that, with Meta\u2019s stock trading down 5% this year. Putting AI chips in tents is one way to trim the bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment and will update this article if it responds. <\/p>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n