build-out

noun

ˈbild-ˌau̇t 

variants or less commonly buildout

plural build-outs also buildouts

1

a

: work done to make a structure or system ready for use or to bring a construction or development project to a completed state

When the build-out of the campus is complete, as many as 7,500 students will attend class there.

—Janis L. Magin

b

: work done to expand a system (such as a telecommunications system)

The buildout of new infrastructure for digital cellular telephony is at such an early stage that it's impossible to predict what the performance of some of the systems will be.

—Brian C. Fenton

c

: a project or process involving such work

Of course, the Chinese are traveling and spending more in their own country too, in part because of a gigantic infrastructure build-out; China will have constructed more high-speed-rail capacity by the end of the decade than is currently operating in the rest of the world, some 10,000 miles' (16,000 km) worth.

—Bill Saporito

2

: a state in which an area has been fully developed

At build-out, the community is planned to include retail, restaurant and office space, a hotel, urban-style and loft apartments, townhomes, and condominiums.

—The Flower Mound (Texas) Leader

Examples of build-out in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Her remit there includes co-leading Meta Compute, the division that manages the company’s AI infrastructure build-out; and an initiative aimed at helping small-business owners, including the 200 million already on the platform, adopt AI. —Ellie Austin, Fortune, 27 May 2026

While the memory chips business was traditionally cyclical, the massive AI infrastructure build-out cycle has broken the pattern. —Bloomberg, Mercury News, 27 May 2026

The Lakers’ front office build-out comes as the team enters a pivotal offseason. —Dan Woike, New York Times, 25 May 2026

Public markets, with their quarterly earnings cadence and analyst scrutiny, are a less forgiving environment for that kind of structural gap than the sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms that have funded the AI build-out so far. —Paulo Carvão, Forbes.com, 21 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1902, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Rhymes for build-out

• about
• bailout
• blackout
• blowout
• breakout
• burnout
• buyout
• checkout
• closeout
• cutout
• devout
• dropout