Long used to house workers in America’s remote oil fields, manufactured homes are finding a new booming customer: the AI industry.With the demand for computing infrastructure growing by the day, the rush to build data centers is boosting the need for manufactured homes that house construction crews.A typical 100-megawatt data center employs hundreds of workers to build it, although it needs only dozens to eventually operate it, according to a University of Southern California Climate Center report.“We’ve got some pretty big orders to provide housing to data center projects,” Cavco Industries Chief Executive Officer Bill Boor said in an interview last week. Cavco is expanding in one of the country’s busiest data-center markets. The company’s $190 million acquisition of American Homestar last year significantly increased its manufacturing footprint in Texas.US data center capacity is projected to reach 194 gigawatts by 2035, according to BloombergNEF, and Texas is set to surpass Virginia as the world’s largest data center market by 2030, according Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.“It’s absolutely creating demand,” Boor said.Cavco shares fell as much as 5 per cent Friday morning after reporting earnings Thursday afternoon, before recovering to trade roughly flat with the prior session.While new data-center projects are facing growing resistance in communities from Texas to South Florida, each project that does move forward needs a place for workers.Built in factories and usually transported on a permanent chassis, manufactured homes can be delivered faster than traditional housing and moved when they’re no longer needed. That flexibility has long made them useful for housing workers near remote or fast-growing job sites.In the past, oil booms have driven demand for manufactured housing in West Texas and North Dakota, where drilling activity spurred the need for workforce housing, Boor said. There is currently a large need for workers, too. Some builders are offering perks like free steaks and golf simulators to lure labor to the constructions sites. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comPublished on August 1, 2026