Elon Musk · xAI · The Guardian Technology
‘Elonville’: US residents say Musk’s xAI offered to buy homes if they don’t sue over datacenter noise
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People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk ’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer, to sell their houses to his company and make way.
Key facts
- While no on-site air pollution monitoring has been done, the Southern Environmental Law Center estimated the toxic emissions from these turbines, which are typically highly polluting, have caused
- Since July 2024, xAI has constructed three vast datacenters, called Colossus the reporter, Colossus II and Macrohardrr, in the Memphis and Southaven conurbation, which sprawls across Tennessee’s border
- Since 9 October, five neighborhood homes have been bought by MZX, according to DeSoto county records
- Rose said she was shocked when the power plant, a former Duke Energy site housing 69 temporary gas turbines to feed the new datacenters, began its low-level growl in August last year
Summary
Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise. (Musk’s AI company officially became SpaceXAI in July and has lately been rebranded as SpaceXSI but to neighbors of the datacenter in Mississippi, it remains xAI.) This plan could potentially swallow up almost the entire neighborhood of Colonial Hills, on the western flank of Southaven.
“It sounds like an airplane engine but it’s continuous, it’s incredibly loud,” said Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher, of the xAI site which sits about two miles from her home.