Just when the AI data center boom seemed like it could not get any stranger, Meta has started building data centers inside tents. The unusual strategy appears to borrow in equal parts from Tesla and Elon Musk’s xAI.
In a bid to cut construction time in half, Meta has built six tents outside New Albany, Ohio. The company calls them “rapid deployment structures.” Michael Thomas, founder of data center tracker Cleanview, uncovered the project through satellite images and local permits.
Meta’s Ambitious Plans For Data Centers
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke last year about his plan to use weatherproof tents to house multi-gigawatt data centers. However, Thomas’s images reveal the sheer speed and scale of the build. City permits show Meta started constructing five 125,000-square-foot tents between April and June. Satellite images confirm all the structures are now complete.
The approach echoes the tents Tesla once built in the parking lot of its Fremont, California factory. Tesla used them to rush out the Model 3 when it was scrambling to hit production targets. Meta’s Ohio site also runs on 200 megawatts of modular gas turbines nearby, an off-grid power tactic popularized by xAI. Inside the tents, AI chips likely worth billions of dollars will hum away.
Thomas did not mince words about what this signals. He wrote that Meta is building dozens of massive tents across US campuses, stuffing billions of dollars of chips inside, and powering them with off-grid turbines. In his view, the AI race has officially entered its “Mad Max phase.”
Problems with Meta’s AI Struggle
The tents have appeared at an awkward moment for Meta. The company has struggled to release its AI models to developers. A Wall Street Journal report found that Meta’s latest model, Muse Spark, is finished, but the APIs developers need to access it have faced repeated delays.
Cost pressure explains much of the urgency. Meta has said it intends to spend up to $145 billion on data centers and other capital expenditures. Wall Street has not welcomed that figure, and Meta’s stock has traded down 5% this year. Stuffing AI chips into tents is one blunt way to trim the bill.
The trend matters far beyond Ohio. As global tech giants chase cheaper, faster ways to scale AI infrastructure, the cost of building it is reshaping the entire industry. For emerging markets like Pakistan, where AI services increasingly run on infrastructure owned by these same companies, the race to cut costs could eventually shape pricing, access, and reliability for users everywhere.
