Just when you thought the AI data center boom couldn’t get any crazier, Meta went and built data centers in tents. The strategy borrows in equal parts from Tesla and xAI.
To cut construction time in half, Meta built six tents — or “rapid deployment structures,” as the company describes them — outside of New Albany, Ohio, according to founder Michael Thomas. Clean looktracking data center placement.
Thomas’ findings are not entirely new. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg He spoke to the information last year about the company’s plan to use weatherproof tents to house its multi-gigawatt data centers.
But Thomas’ pictures and a review of local permits demonstrate the speed of construction and the scale of the project. Meta began building five 125,000-square-foot tents between April and June, according to city permits reviewed by Thomas. The satellite images he shared on his X page show that all the structures have been built.
The use of tents is reminiscent of those erected in the parking lot of Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, where it is rushing to release the Model 3. The site is also equipped with 200 megawatts of electricity. modular gas turbines nearby, a tactic popularized by rival xAI.
Inside the tents, billions of dollars worth of artificial intelligence chips will do their job.
Tentacles have sprung up as Meta struggles to present its AI models to developers. Recently report In the Wall Street Journal, Meta’s latest model revealed that Muse Spark is complete, but the APIs that developers rely on to access it have been repeatedly delayed.
Meta said it intends to spend up to $145 billion on data centers and other capital expenditures. Wall Street didn’t like the sound of that, as Meta’s shares are down 5% this year. Placing AI chips in tents is one way to lower the bill.
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for comment and will update this article if it responds.
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