Nvidia reveals plans for 'an AI factory in a shipping container' to build data centers in weeks, not months

Nvidia ( NVDA ) wants to reduce the time it takes for its customers to start generating revenue from its AI systems.

At its GTC event in Berlin on Wednesday, the company unveiled its DSX POD, a reference design for an AI data center packed into a box about the size of a standard shipping container.

Data center construction can take months, if not years, to get up and running. And because they don't start generating revenue until they begin processing AI tokens, the longer a data center takes to come online, the more expenses pile up.

The DSX POD is meant to serve as a faster, modular solution for companies that need access to data center capabilities sooner rather than later.

"The moment then you have to install these AI factories, and they're gigantic. And putting these AI factories into service takes months. If we could reduce that months, you know, from the moment that the systems are shipped to the moment that it's deployed and being operational, if we could reduce it from months to weeks or even a month, that will be completely game-changing for all of these AI factories," CEO Jensen Huang told Deirdre Bosa.

According to Nvidia, the Vera Rubin-powered DSX PODs will arrive on site, ready to be plugged into the power, cooling, and networking infrastructure, reducing deployment time from six months to 14 days.

The company said DSX PODs won't replace traditional data centers, but will serve as a means to start running AI applications before brick-and-mortar facilities are ready.

"With Nvidia DSX POD, we're bringing factory-built precision and speed to AI infrastructure construction — reducing deployment time from months to weeks so customers can scale capacity and bring revenue-generating production online faster," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

According to the company, the DSX POD supports liquid cooling, but because it uses dry-cooler designs, it can save up to 54 million liters of water per day versus a standard data center.

Standing up data centers more quickly doesn't just help Nvidia's customers, though. Faster data center deployment should ease at least one of the chokepoints in the AI build-out, which means faster chip sales for Nvidia.

Semiconductors aren't the only bottleneck for data center builders. Getting the electricity necessary to power those processors is also a concern. And power plants take far longer to construct than data centers.