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It’s a desperate time for tech companies trying to assert dominance in the AI boom. Back in April, we found out that nearly half of the data centers that were supposed to open this year had been cancelled or significantly delayed — putting a bottleneck on an industry which will live or die by its ability to access AI chips.
The situation has grown so frantic that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has even started building tent-pole data centers with portable gas turbines, Michael Thomas, founder of data center tracking company Cleanview, explained in a recent social media post.
As part of its “Prometheus” project, a gigawatt-scale data center campus in an exurb of Columbus, Ohio, Meta has erected six massive weatherproof tents to speed up the deployment of its precious AI chips. Per Thomas, each so-called “rapid deployment structure” is 125,000 square feet in size, all powered by a 200-megawatt generator facility nearby.
Lined up in a row on a dirt construction site, the buildings look more like industrial chicken farms than traditional data centers.
Meta is building dozens of massive tents at campuses across the US, sticking billions of dollars of chips inside, and powering them with off-grid turbines.
The AI race has officially entered its Mad Max phase.
Over the last month, I reviewed hundreds of documents and satellite… pic.twitter.com/U8yDZUlEO0 — Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) June 4, 2026
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