We've reported on the rapid, almost-certainly-ecologically-unsound before, but Meta appears to have taken things to the next level. And that level is camping.
According to , Meta is expanding its AI hardware capabilities so rapidly, it's putting some of its AI data center hardware in tents. Erecting brick and mortar (or steel and, err, probably steel) buildings to house vast racks of AI-chomping machines is a slow process, and AI development, it appears, waits for no construction worker. So, tents it is.
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Something about this reminds me of live music production, in which a tent is often hastily erected over precious equipment because the weather forecast didn't predict rain. Anyway, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been busy (remember that?) about his grand plans for a massive data center future, including several multi-gigawatt superclusters:
"We're actually building several multi-GW clusters. We're calling the first one Prometheus and it's coming online in '26," Zuckerberg said.
"We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years. We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan."
Presumably these mega-hyper-super-duper centers won't rely on for large parts of their construction as well, but stranger things have happened I suppose. And as for the of building and operating such massive facilities at such an unprecedented rate? That's an argument that just keeps rolling.
Still, it appears Meta is under an in-tents phase of AI development. I'll hand in my notice now, shall I?
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