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Image Credits:Matthias Balk/picture confederation / Getty Images12:33 PM PDT · June 4, 2026
Just erstwhile you thought the AI information halfway roar couldn’t get immoderate crazier, Meta has gone and built information centers successful tents. The strategy appears to get successful adjacent parts from Tesla and xAI.
In a bid to chopped the clip to completion successful half, Meta has built six tents — oregon “rapid deployment structures” arsenic the institution describes them — outside of New Albany, Ohio, according to Michael Thomas, laminitis of Cleanview, which tracks information halfway deployments.
Thomas’ find isn’t wholly new. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the Information past twelvemonth astir his program to usage weatherproof tents to location the company’s multi-gigawatt information centers.
But Thomas’ images and reappraisal of section permits showcase the velocity of operation and standard of the project. According to metropolis permits reviewed by Thomas, Meta started gathering 5 125,000-square-foot tents betwixt April and June 2026. The outer images helium shared successful his station connected X, amusement the structures person each been built.
The usage of tents is reminiscent to those that Tesla built successful the parking batch of its Fremont, California mill erstwhile it was rushing to rotation retired the Model 3. Nearby, 200 megawatts of modular state turbines supply powerfulness to the site, a maneuver wide deployed by rival xAI.
Inside the tents, AI chips, apt worthy billions of dollars, volition spell astir their business.
Meta is gathering dozens of monolithic tents astatine campuses crossed the US, sticking billions of dollars of chips inside, and powering them with off-grid turbines.
The AI contention has officially entered its Mad Max phase.
Over the past month, I reviewed hundreds of documents and satellite… pic.twitter.com/U8yDZUlEO0
The tents person sprung up arsenic Meta has struggled to merchandise its AI models to developers. A caller report successful the Wall Street Journal said that, portion its latest model, Muse Spark, is complete, the APIs that developers trust connected to entree LLMs from their applications has been repeatedly delayed.
Meta has said it intends to walk up to $145 cardinal connected information centers and different superior expenditures. Wall Street hasn’t liked the sounds of that, with Meta’s banal trading down 5% this year. Putting AI chips successful tents is 1 mode to trim the bill.
TechCrunch has reached retired to Meta for remark and volition update this nonfiction if it responds.
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Tim De Chant is simply a elder clime newsman astatine TechCrunch. He has written for a wide scope of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, wherever helium was founding editor.
De Chant is besides a lecturer successful MIT’s Graduate Program successful Science Writing, and helium was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship astatine MIT successful 2018, during which clip helium studied clime technologies and explored caller concern models for journalism. He received his PhD successful biology science, policy, and absorption from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA grade successful biology studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Tim by emailing tim.dechant@techcrunch.com.
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