Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/04/meta-steals-a-tactic-from-tesla-and-builds-data-centers-in-tents/

by gnabgib • 1 month ago

105 131 1 month ago

This is madness. The polling is in and the public hates, positively hates AI. So of course the response is to do AI even more. https://newrepublic.com/article/209163/ai-industry-discoveri...

shimman• 1 month ago

Yeah but the public is against progress. The public cries for material needs like medicare for all, universal childcare, a jobs program? These are all clearly foreign actors that want to prevent American progress on AI! They must be Chinese agents for all we know, what sort of American wants to provide healthcare for their family over proudly paying higher utility rates to ensure a new batch of tech bros become billionaires?

bell-cot• 1 month ago

You don't move up the Cyberdyne Systems org chart by caring what the stupid little meatbags think.

Dlanv• 1 month ago

The public hates ai but also uses ai in mass quantities.

Capitalism abides by your dollars not your voice.

So people can decry ai all they want but if they keep using it, it won't go away.

Even then it's probable that AI is a big enough productivity boost for certain industries that even if no consumers used AI, businesses would still prop AI up enough for it to live on.

FabCH• 1 month ago

Capitalism abides by dollars only so long as force is not in play. When the Molotov cocktails start flying, dollars lose their grip.

Simone Weil had good theoretical and practical observations on force vs economy 100 years ago.

akomtu2• 1 month ago

The public is forced to use AI at work and outside of work because the corpos are determined in inserting their AI everywhere. Then the people come back home and see that their energy bills have doubled because of AI datacenters. Of course people hate AI.

john_strinlai8• 1 month ago

there are polls where a sample of people say they hate ai. on the other hand, there are a billion+ weekly active users.

from a business perspective, which of those two statistics would you give more weight?

bluefirebrand2• 1 month ago

How many of those people are just feeling like they have a gun to their heads? Use the AI or become unemployed and unemployable?

"People use AI so this must be a revealed preference" is such a bad argument when people are feeling so precarious

krige• 1 month ago

Out of the two? Probably the polls. "Active users" is blatantly a weasel metric.

platevoltage2• 1 month ago

Yeah, and they're all willing participants. \s

righthand2• 1 month ago

But a billion active users != number of US citizens that take on the burden of AI. So go build your AI on land where your customers are if they like it so much.

HWR_142• 1 month ago

People hate AI datacenters in their backyard. From a business perspective, I hope "obey the local zoning laws" is a fairly high priority.

unknownfuture3• 1 month ago

This is basically an argument about revealed preference, and these things are always more complicated than that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

cyberrock• 1 month ago

The public is against it for hypocritical reasons that they're not afraid to inflict on someone else. They're against the water and electricity use but they also angrily demand more semiconductor production that require building whole new reservoirs in Tainan, irrigation channels from the Han river, and coal plants in Anhui, as well as restarting Fukushima. Then when those companies come build plants in Arizona and New York, suddenly the reality of how the cow is butchered hits them and it stalls in permitting for years.

sellmesoap• 1 month ago

Technology is getting too in tents for me. /former boy scout

jackyinger• 1 month ago

A desperate bid to get around data center bans: disguise them as homeless encampments

Avicebron• 1 month ago

The real unlock, the homeless can shelter for warm next to the gpus, and they can recruit some for some fent if they need workers.

Heck, call it public housing and bringing jobs into the community.

trallnag• 1 month ago

Homeless encampments or mountaineering base camps

expedition32• 1 month ago

Microsoft had a neat trick here in the Netherlands: instead of opening a new site they decided to make a their existing site higher by adding a few floors.

Ofcourse that only works once the Dutch borg adapts!

bluGill4• 1 month ago

While that is done, unless land is expensive (which it rarely is by enough) building out is a lot cheaper than building up.

burnte• 1 month ago

It's easier to get datacenters approved than homeless housing projects.

MSFT_Edging• 1 month ago

They'll be bulldozed and all those servers will lose their ids and medications.

commieneko• 1 month ago

"All this inference will be lost in time, like GPUs in rain."

scottlamb3• 1 month ago

Meta's first five buildings took between two and three years to build, but Williams is almost done building out 200 MW (additional) off-grid power plants in a year, and to match that they're putting their equipment in tents. That raises questions for me:

* Did they expect the next five buildings to also take between two and three years to build if done in the same manner? I'd hope it'd be significantly faster the second time because they've perfected the design, found good local contractors and suppliers, etc.

* How much of the time was the actual structure vs. all the stuff inside they still have to do with the tents?

* How long are they expecting to keep this? Are they anticipating extra problems like leaking roofs?

* What are the "off-grid power plants"? Is this basically a whole bunch of diesel or natural gas generators? [edit: oh, yes, "The site is also powered by 200 megawatts of modular gas turbines". I wonder if they're trucking in the fuel too.] If so, yuck.

bluGill4• 1 month ago

I would guess the real problem is contractors are bottle-necked in good times, but not stupid enough to expand - knowing that bad times will come and they have to pay for all the expansion. (humans can be laid off, but you still need to make the payment on the bulldozer)

scottlamb3• 1 month ago

That makes sense. Although I have to pick on your example a bit: wouldn't they still need a concrete foundation for all that weight and thus still need bulldozers? Still unsure how much of the work they're actually avoiding.

christkv2• 1 month ago

Just waiting for the first heist

bubblegumcrisis• 1 month ago

I'm waiting for the first drone attack.

christkv2• 1 month ago

Nothing of importance would be lost. But think about the amount of USD in each rack.

fc417fc8028• 1 month ago

It seems absurd to me that we build such capital dense things above ground.

slicktux• 1 month ago

When I read the headline I imagined a huge tent with steel beam structure and professional grade covers with HVAC and concrete footprint.

Seems everyone else imagined a camping tent. Different backgrounds I guess.

Alex_L_Wood• 1 month ago

Yeah, my immediate picture was a blue hobo tent with some extenders sticking out of it.

Descon• 1 month ago

Those look like sprung structures's tents. They can get real fancy: https://www.sprung.com/

artisin• 1 month ago

WoW. I was thinking about building a new home recently, but now I'm thinking about pitching a membrane-tensioned tax haven, cuz last time I checked, temporary structures are exempt from property taxes. This is like the ultimate real estate hack.

lokar• 1 month ago

Several gates at Santa Rosa airport are in a fancy tent. You don’t even notice at first.

yanosh_kunsh• 1 month ago

I'm not sure why they even call them tents. Those are called fabric buildings. Fabric buildings have a lifespan of over 20 years[1] and this is limited by the PVC membranes, the actual steel structure can last a lot longer.

[1] https://www.rubbusa.com/approach/quality/

jzymbaluk• 1 month ago

The fact that these behemoths are being powered by gas generators is horrifying

code_biologist2• 1 month ago

Your language is ambiguous — your horror is in reference to natural gas turbine generators (used at these installations) and not gasoline generators (like in a home context)?

Why the horror? I'd prefer the gas remain in the ground, but given the gassy production of US shale oil, I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared. I am frustrated that pollutant emissions aren't being policed, and also that the sudden turbine demand plus supply chain issues mean using aeroderivative turbines that are quite a bit less efficient than more complex combined cycle turbines.

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-wor...

vel0city3• 1 month ago

I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared

I doubt this is really reducing the rates of flaring and leaky wells. Its just additional demand.

The biggest problem I've seen is they tend to build these somewhat close to residential areas with generation on-site. Often these power generation centers aren't right next to residential areas due to both air and noise pollution. But governments are often seeming to turn a blind eye.

mlyle• 1 month ago

We have plenty of fields producing just natural gas in the US. It is not merely a byproduct of oil production.

Only about 35 percent is “associated gas” production from oil production.

unknownfuture3• 1 month ago

I'd prefer they use cheap and available renewables rather than accelerating climate change. But to each their own I guess.

(And to head it off at the pass: if that can't be done then this should be done at all)

uridjd274• 1 month ago

Hear hear! Much better to put all that energy to good use rather than waste it

giancarlostoro• 1 month ago

It's not supposed to be permanent, but it also allows them to not waste time waiting on physical locations to be built. Given how highly competitive this all is, I'm not surprised at all.

pier25• 1 month ago

Every time I do something that's not supposed to be permanent until I have time to implement a proper solution it lasts for years.

vel0city3• 1 month ago

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

zekrioca• 1 month ago

It is so sweet that you believe in all these.

bethekidyouwant2• 1 month ago

How did you want to power them? You know the gas generators are the largest power generation source in the US right?

emsign2• 1 month ago

How about not powering them at all.

energy123• 1 month ago

Solar wind storage and transmission like California's grid:

https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso

It might be a little more expensive for them, but it's cheaper when you factor in the costs of pollution which they aren't paying for and which they're forcing us to pay for through increased diseases and global warming.

Karrot_Kream8• 1 month ago

The reason is because permitting and building a natgas generator is the easiest among the energy production methods in the US. Datacenters need to be close-ish to Internet Exchanges to be cost competitive when lighting up network capacity. Solar cells are expensive (Chinese tariffs or domestic production) and permitting is tough. Nuclear is still a permitting and cost nightmare. Wind requires a lot of land. Hydroelectric is considered an environmental dead end after the ecological effects of the Hoover Dam. Geothermal is still unproven. Transmission lines moving power between generation and consumption is a permitting nightmare.

In that world, natural gas just makes the most sense. The US hasn't build generation capacity in any meaningful way in decades. We've deindustrialized over time so it's been relatively okay, until a new form of industry (datacenters) starts putting pressure on the whole thing.

paleotrope• 1 month ago

Building a facility that uses megawatts of energy in an old farm field in the country, and having long lead times to get it installed, isn't really indicative of "deindustrialization" is it? Also, I don't think building datacenters outside of Columbus are being driven by closeness to an IX. I don't recall seeing Columbus as being significant on any US backbone map. More likely they just want to be close to each other. Someone must have started that ball rolling.

fc417fc8028• 1 month ago

Solar cells are expensive (Chinese tariffs or domestic production) and permitting is tough.

The tariffs I understand (even if they really don't make sense in this particular case) but the permitting I do not. Do you have more information or links?

Wind requires a lot of land.

In rural but populated areas wind is generally installed on someone else's grazing area for a small fee. In truly unpopulated areas (ie desert) access to land isn't usually an issue since there's approximately zero demand for it.

That said I do agree with your general theme that our grid is underinvested and the management and policy surrounding it are a mess.

root-parent• 1 month ago

Illegal gas turbines, should be noted...

thepryz2• 1 month ago

Elon's was definitely illegal/unpermitted gas turbines as countless news stories that came out can attest but do you have any support to claim Meta's turbines are?

FerretFred• 1 month ago

As always, there are some very erudite comments here on HN, which is why I like the site so much. My erudite comment, or rather question, is this: why aren't these people using AI to solve all these problems? Surely it would be a good test of The Product and maybe it would give s[ck]eptics some food for thought?

Theodores• 1 month ago

Why not ask someone that can do astrology to do your stock picks and sports bets for you?

You know and I know that The Product is at best nowt more than 'astrology'. The Product does do search engine things though, and it could be scaled down to fit in a phone or even a watch, to be good enough for 'the pub quiz' or for writing a gormless email.

As for the article, META does very little for the vastness of the corporation. They have gazillions of developers yet Facebook and Instagram are as boring as ever, Threads and the Metaverse are just lame and what else do they do, apart from serve ads?

frognumber2• 1 month ago

Extreme competition

and

Safety

Are opposites.

arjie• 1 month ago

The whole thing is like a video game: your construction and power are your limiting factors. We need to CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS and so on. It's interesting that this is such a limiter on the ground that SpaceX is pursuing AI satellites in space. Truly an incredible time to be alive.

emsign2• 1 month ago

This is not a video game.

zeafoamrun• 1 month ago

It's literally factorio

WarmWash2• 1 month ago

The only thing SpaceX is pursuing is dumb money.

diordiderot3• 1 month ago

Get some skin in the game then smart guy

bigyabai2• 1 month ago

this is such a limiter on the ground that SpaceX is pursuing AI satellites in space

What is your source for this claim? It sounds like conjecture to me.

Neither power nor construction is easier in space than it is on Earth. Higher power means higher heat dissipation, which means higher-cost satellites or downsized AI hardware. Construction is monumentally more expensive when you have to ship GPUs and their associated infrastructure away from the planet where they're manufactured.

SpaceX's orbital compute will not compete against any ground-based AI capacity. It will most likely be used for edge processing of Starlink sensor data, either as an SAR solution, multiband jamming apparatus, or any other SDR applications used at the orbital scale. There is no other justification that I am aware of that necessitates space-based AI inference. The commercial space-based AI line is a glaringly obvious coverup.

Karrot_Kream8• 1 month ago

Elon has mentioned this in interviews and the S-2 for SpaceX calls out permitting challenges as a reason for moving to space. Elon being Elon, I don't really believe him but this is what he claims at least.

vel0city3• 1 month ago

Microsoft had trialed datacenters in tents nearly 20 years ago. I remember hearing about their trials at some talks back in the day. Crazy to look back on the dates here, felt like it wasn't that long ago.

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/new-from-mi...

fc417fc8028• 1 month ago

They also tested out sinking data center modules in shallow water to reduce the difficulties surrounding both cooling and land use. I wonder if anyone has revisited that idea in light of present market conditions?

manarth• 1 month ago

They have!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/09/worlds-first-w...

luk212• 1 month ago

So AI infrastructure buildout is starting to feel a lot like emergency industrial mobilization...

Also, building rapid temp shells plus nearby gas turbines paints a very different picture than the one conveyed by the "clean-energy" PR around hyperscale data centers.

akomtu2• 1 month ago

This is what happens when people with big money succumb to AI psychosis.

kajman2• 1 month ago

The real sickness is the years spent chasing stock buybacks and low taxes while infrastructure and industrial capacity languished. What an absurd situation where arrays of "temporary" on-site gas turbines are the only viable way to build new infrastructure like this.

kylehotchkiss• 1 month ago

Our parents aren't getting enough AI generated patriotic calls to action! roll out the bulldozers!!

sorieus• 1 month ago

These datacenters have been under construction since at least June of 2025. You can see 1 building was already up in 2025 and the land was just farmland back in 9/13/2024. So this construction has been over 1 year in the making. Does this mean its construction slop? For reference colossus xAI datacenter was up and running in less than 7 months. I couldn't tell you at what capacity but this doesn't seem like quite the same story.

Edit For a little more context xAI colossus 2 looks to be an empty warehouse on 3/10/2025. By 12/2025 they had already either filled the warehouse or they couldn't use the space because they appear to built multiple structures outside for the datacenter.

For comparison again meta already had that datacenter there for a number of years and then over 2 years added those structures. In 9 months it appears Tesla built a datacenter into an existing building and added structures.

KaiserPro• 1 month ago

When I left at the start of 2025, they were already building the tent.

The difference between Meta and tesla is that meta has done it many times before and in loads of countries.

felooboolooomba3• 1 month ago

Inside the tents, AI chips, likely worth billions of dollars, will go about their business.

I wonder how the security is. It's just a matter of time until organized crime will start paying attention to this. Perhaps a bet for polymarket?

thepryz2• 1 month ago

Better than most businesses. Most data center campuses I've seen, regardless of construction, were behind a substantial permitter fence and had some on-premise guard force. Like razor blades, they would be better to intercept GPUs or other equipment when in transit though there have been decades of rumors that such goods are usually done by trucking companies with ties to organized crime.

felooboolooomba3• 1 month ago

There was a recent case in the UK where a trucking company was sold. The new owner then proceeded to steal shipments.

rasz• 1 month ago

Imagine a drone dropping incendiary payload. I dub thee ransomhardware.

felooboolooomba3• 1 month ago

Any data on how these tents cope in a storm?

iJohnDoe• 1 month ago

Off topic. The internet is so broken when someone still posts to X.com and then a news outlet posts that as an article. Maybe if it wasn’t X.com being used it wouldn’t be so bad. Seems like we can do better.

Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents

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