Meta Follows Tesla’s Lead: Building Data Centers in Tents

Just when you thought the AI data center boom was already wild enough, Meta really built a data center in a tent. This strategy seems to draw inspiration from Tesla and xAI to the same degree.

According to Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, the company behind the tracking data center deployment, Meta erected six tents—referred to as “rapid deployment structures”—outside New Albany, Ohio, to halve the construction time.

Thomas’s discovery was not entirely without foreshadowing. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously revealed to The Information his plan to use weatherproof tents to house the company’s gigawatt-scale data centers.

However, the images provided by Thomas and the review of local permit documents demonstrate the speed and scale of the project’s construction. According to the municipal permits Thomas examined, Meta began building five 125,000-square-foot tents between April and June. Satellite images he posted on the X platform show that these structures have all been completed.

The practice of using tents reminds one of Tesla’s makeshift encampment in the parking lot of its Fremont, California factory, where the company was racing to launch the Model 3. The site was also powered by a nearby 200-megawatt modular gas turbine, a tactic popularized by rival xAI.

Inside the tent, AI chips worth potentially billions of dollars will begin to operate.

Meta is constructing dozens of massive tents across its campuses in the U.S., housing billions of dollars worth of chips and powering them with off-grid turbines. The AI race has officially entered the “Mad Max” phase.

The emergence of these tents coincides with Meta’s difficulties in releasing its AI models to developers. A recent report by The Wall Street Journal found that Meta’s latest model, Muse Spark, has been completed, but the API interface relied upon by developers has repeatedly been delayed.

Meta has announced plans to invest up to $145 billion in data centers and other capital expenditures. Wall Street is not optimistic about this move, as Meta’s stock price has already dropped by 5% this year. Placing AI chips in tents is one way to cut costs.