Meta Built Six 125,000-Square-Foot Tents in Ohio to Cut Data Center Construction Time in Half
Meta has built six weatherproof “rapid deployment structures” at its New Albany, Ohio campus, satellite imagery and local permit filings confirm. Each tent covers 125,000 square feet. Five of the six were permitted between April and June 2026. All six structures are now standing.
The site is powered by 200 megawatts of modular gas turbines installed nearby — off-grid generation that mirrors the approach xAI used at Colossus in Memphis. The strategy allows Meta to bring compute online ahead of utility interconnects, which can lag by 18 months or more at the scale modern AI campuses require.
The Construction Calculus
A conventional data center shell takes 18-24 months to complete. The tent approach halves that by replacing engineered construction with rapid-deployment structures that arrive pre-fabricated, anchor to a prepared slab, and go up in weeks. The trade-off is permanent infrastructure — conventional data centers are built for 20-year lifespans; tent structures are designed for faster rotation and repositioning.
Inside the tents at New Albany, Meta will install AI chips — Nvidia GPUs or its own MTIA silicon — worth billions of dollars collectively. The compute will feed Meta’s AI development pipeline, which includes Llama models and Muse Spark, its current frontier model. Per a June 2026 Wall Street Journal report, Muse Spark’s model weights are complete but API rollout to developers has been repeatedly delayed, suggesting compute availability may be a constraint.
The Tesla Connection
Mark Zuckerberg flagged the tent strategy in an interview with The Information in 2025. The approach draws directly from Tesla’s manufacturing playbook: in 2018, Tesla erected tents in the Fremont, California factory parking lot to accelerate Model 3 production when the factory floor couldn’t scale fast enough. Tesla used the same logic — speed of deployment over permanence of structure — to hit production targets under investor pressure.
Meta’s situation is analogous. Its stock is down roughly 5% in 2026 against a capex commitment of up to $145 billion for the year. The tent approach generates deployed compute faster without the multi-year lead time of traditional construction.
Scale Across the US
New Albany is not isolated. Permit reviews and satellite analysis by Cleanview founder Michael Thomas, who first documented the Ohio site, indicate Meta is deploying tent campuses across multiple US locations. The total number of structures and aggregate square footage across all campuses has not been disclosed by Meta.
The 200MW gas turbine installation at New Albany is consistent with similar modular power deployments at hyperscale campuses where utility tie-ins are not yet complete. Williams Companies — a natural gas infrastructure firm — has been publicly involved in powering data centers through similar arrangements.
Competitive Context
The tent strategy is now a recognized playbook in the hyperscaler arms race. xAI used a related approach at Colossus in Memphis, constructing at speed and bringing compute online faster than traditional builds allowed. Google and Microsoft have relied primarily on long-lead traditional construction but have accelerated timelines through modular pre-fabricated components.
Meta’s willingness to house billions of dollars in chips inside what are fundamentally fabric structures reflects how much the competitive calculus has shifted. Time-to-compute now outweighs almost every other infrastructure consideration, including the long-term capital efficiency of the structure housing it.