To house the hundreds or thousands of temporary workers needed to build an AI data center, developers are increasingly relying on temporary villages known as man camps.
This style of camp was popularized as housing for men working in remote oil fields. For example, as a Bitcoin mining facility in rural Dickens County, Texas is converted into a 1.6 gigawatt data center, Bloomberg reports its workers are living in gray housing units with access to a gym, a laundromat, game rooms, and a cafeteria that grills steaks on-demand.
A company called Target Hospitality has signed multiple contracts worth a total of $132 million to build and operate the Dickens County camp, which could eventually house more than 1,000 workers.