US electric truck firm Workhorse Group is looking to move into the data center space and offer its own containerized pods.

The Nasdaq-listed firm this week announced its intent to move into data centers and offer a turnkey, compute-ready, containerized mobile AI data center designed to “meet the localized mobile AI infrastructure needs of distributed deployment applications worldwide.”

“We believe this expansion into a new, growing segment is a strategic step that builds on the broader capabilities we now have as a result of the merger late last year, and it supports our expanded company vision to build the ‘new’ Workhorse as an industrial technology company. Workhorse already builds highly reliable mobile platforms: electric medium-duty commercial vehicles manufactured at our commercial-scale plant in Union City, Indiana,” said Scott Griffith, CEO of Workhorse. “We feel that this is an opportunity to build a competitive advantage and develop a new revenue stream in this exciting new category where we can leverage many of our existing core capabilities to establish a scalable early mover position in the mobile AI data center market.”

The new containerized pod is still in development but aims to leverage Workhorse’s existing engineering, software, testing, agile design and supply-chain capabilities. The firm also promoted potential cost synergies from manufacturing the data centers at its plant in Indiana.

Workhorse is aiming for initial production and commercial deliveries by 2027.

“The initial containerized design is expected to feature liquid-to-liquid cooling, isolated server racks, a separate climate-controlled operator zone with two workstations, integrated uninterruptable power supply (UPS) and battery back-up power, a fire suppression system, advanced monitoring for safety and security, and the ability to use multiple sources of external power, among other capabilities needed to operate a mobile AI data center,” the company said. Full details of the planned pods haven’t been shared.

The firm said its expertise in areas such as power electronics, thermal management, ruggedized enclosures, mobile connectivity, vibration isolation, and embedded systems is also applicable to containerized platforms.

Workhorse was founded in 2007 as AMP Electric Vehicles. Originally focused on hybrid passenger vehicles, the company later acquired Navistar’s Workhorse subsidiary, which was focused on truck chassis. The combined company was renamed Workhorse in 2015 and began offering electric trucks.

The company posted a $19.9 million net loss for Q1 2026 against revenues of $4.3 million. It was the latest in a series of quarterly net losses.

Earlier this year, Belgium-based electric-truck startup Windrose Electric outlined plans to develop a mobile, containerized data center.

Workhorse is the latest in a number of unexpected companies looking to get into the AI data center market.

Former shoe company Allbirds is one of the more notable examples, having rebranded as Smartbird. Other examples include a Taiwanese whiskey importer, a recruitment website, a Singaporean healthcare company, an Indian TV production firm, two Chinese car loan financing companies, an aviation operator, an owner of Hard Rock Cafe franchises in Malaysia, and an Indonesian eCommerce software provider.