Two power stories are running along the line between Mississippi and Tennessee, and the turbine counts do not belong in the same column. In Southaven, xAI bought a former Duke Power gas plant in July 2025 to supply computing capacity across the state line in Memphis. That plant is one installation. The South Memphis data center is another. Add the figures and you invent a fleet that no single report describes.
On the Southaven site, the pace is the point. In the summer of 2025, about 18 mobile gas turbines were there. By May 25, 2026, Mississippi Today reported more than 40. Forget a software release cycle. This is how an AI company adds electricity when the grid will not move on a product timeline.
In securities filings cited by Mississippi Today, xAI has called the ability to build that power infrastructure quickly “a significant competitive advantage.” The same May 2026 report said the company was considering a public listing in the summer of 2026. The filing is a capacity claim. It does not show that the turbines are fully permitted, that neighbors have accepted them, or that a customer buying model access has a quiet, durable supply behind the demo.
Power, claimed in gigawatts
Mississippi Today’s December 31, 2025 account is messier than a campus announcement. The Southaven plant was described as power for two xAI data centers in Memphis. Musk wrote that xAI had bought a third building, rendered MACROHADRR in that post, and said it would expand computing power to almost 2 gigawatts. The spelling and the gigawatt figure are his statement, as that paper reported it, not a confirmed project name or an independent measurement of load.
The company had not said what the warehouse was for. The Information reported it would become a data center. Mississippi Today noted that if that reporting held, Mississippi would be looking at five data-center projects in total. That count is the newspaper’s, and it is conditional. It is not a company disclosure of three finished halls.
Self-supplied power is the strategy, not a backup generator in the parking lot. Mississippi does not require air permits for mobile turbines run for less than 12 months. Under that rule, temporary is a legal category. Advocates say federal law does not offer the same grace period. A 12-month clock is a tempting runway when a capacity plan is measured in weeks.
Permanent equipment is a separate fact, and it is easy to mix up with the mobile count. Around April 10, 2026, according to Mississippi Today, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality approved air permits for 41 permanent turbines at the Southaven plant. Those permits are not the more than 40 mobile units reported on the ground by late May. Neither figure includes South Memphis.
The lawsuit that is actually on the docket
The case local reporting covers in detail is a Clean Air Act action over the Southaven turbines, brought by the NAACP through the Southern Environmental Law Center. The group has asked a court to stop operations and to fine xAI for earlier ones. xAI says the turbines do not violate the Act. As of Mississippi Today’s May 25, 2026 report, the dispute was unresolved.
In that same account, the Justice Department was “evaluating potential intervention.” It had asked for more time and had until June 15, 2026 to decide. The court gave xAI the same date to respond or move to dismiss. The department pointed to the Clean Air Act and to President Trump’s January 2025 executive order on U.S. AI dominance, including policy language to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” Intervention was still possible. That reporting did not say it had been completed or rejected.
A circulating version of this story has the department already failing to block the case because xAI technology was used in a war on Iran. That is not what the May 2026 court reporting describes. National AI policy walked into a local air case. A lost wartime motion did not.
Memphis is a related campaign and a different installation. The Memphis Flyer described aerial images from March (it did not state the year) showing 35 gas turbines at the South Memphis data center. Do not add that figure to the Southaven count. SELC later sent xAI a 60-day notice of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act on behalf of the NAACP. A notice is not a filed lawsuit.
Senior attorney Patrick Anderson called installation and operation “without any permits or public oversight” a clear violation, and said the turbines had “pumped out pollution that threatens the health of Memphis families.” The notice cited formaldehyde and other chemicals linked to respiratory disease. SELC placed the site near predominantly Black communities already living with an oil refinery, a steel mill, and a TVA gas plant.
NAACP president Derrick Johnson warned against normalizing unpermitted pollution where residents “don’t have the power to fight back.”
Boosters answer with a compliance claim, not a concession. Materials from the Greater Memphis Chamber, cited by state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, said xAI and the supercomputer launched in Memphis in spring 2024 had “operated in full compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local regulations.” Pearson called that propaganda and pointed back at alleged Clean Air Act violations. That is a live argument between local promoters and environmental-justice advocates. It is not a settled inspection report.
What neighbors can hear, and what one paper says they were offered
Noise does not need a docket number. Southaven residents have complained. xAI built a sound barrier. Residents told Mississippi Today it had little effect. The May 2026 report also includes resident concern about risk to the aquifer. That worry is documented. It is not a completed study, and it is not the Clean Air Act case.
The story that traveled farthest rests on one newsroom. The Guardian reported that agents went door to door in Colonial Hills, on Southaven’s western side, offering to buy homes if owners agreed not to join a lawsuit over power-plant noise. On a recording the paper said it heard, a realtor described a target of 418 homes and said 18 owners had already agreed to sell. xAI did not answer questions about those figures or its plans for the neighborhood. These materials do not independently confirm the targets.
The Guardian described a letter from MZX, identified there as the xAI subsidiary operating the site, telling residents the company “requires property for its business purposes” and was prepared to buy nearby houses if owners stayed out of a noise case filed by three locals, including 20-year homeowner Jason Haley. The paper said DeSoto County records showed five neighborhood purchases by MZX since October 9, and did not specify the year. Piano teacher Elizabeth Rose told The Guardian the plant sounded like “an airplane engine but it’s continuous, it’s incredibly loud, ” and gave the feared result a nickname: Elonville.
Hold those unconfirmed home counts away from the purchase Mississippi Today has actually documented. That paper reported that MZX Tech, an LLC associated with xAI, bought 2400 Stateline Road in Southaven on December 23, 2025. That is a commercial building a short drive from the plant, not a mapped buyout of Colonial Hills. The Guardian’s MZX and Mississippi Today’s MZX Tech should not be stapled together into a neighborhood-clearance program. A private noise suit, if it stands as The Guardian described it, is also not the NAACP case.
Mayor Darren Musselwhite told The Guardian the homes were for employees and a “goodwill gesture from a good corporate citizen, ” that a company city “has never been mentioned, ” and that it was not the intent “at this point.” He also said the development would produce unprecedented tax revenue for DeSoto County. No public figure is attached to that claim in these reports. xAI has said, in comments the paper quoted, that “we care deeply about being good neighbors.” Residents quoted alongside that line heard a different bargain: a sale, on the condition you do not become a plaintiff.
Buying houses for staff can be ordinary corporate real estate. Conditioning the sale on staying out of court, if that term is real, is a litigation tactic in a housewarming card. Whether such a clause would hold is a question The Guardian’s account leaves open. So does the long-term use of any homes that do change hands. “At this point” is doing a lot of work in the mayor’s denial.
Opposition, and a license that is not settled
The pushback is already wider than three front yards. By the end of 2025, the Safe and Sound Coalition had more than 700 signatures asking the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the city to end xAI’s operations. In Memphis, Pearson and Memphis Community Against Pollution have taken the argument public, and the NAACP has asked the Shelby County Health Department and Memphis Light, Gas and Water to stop operations.
A build of this size is also why local officials talk about jobs and tax base. Wanting that investment is not a moral failure, and wanting sleep, cleaner air, and a say in what gets trailered in next door is not a refusal to join the future.
For anyone buying frontier-model capacity, the risk that matters sits upstream of the demo. xAI is generating its own power and has told the market that speed is an edge. That same edge can be a permit case, a noise complaint, and a fight over who has to live next to the plant. Before treating a vendor’s compute as settled infrastructure, ask where the electricity is generated, whether those turbines are still on a temporary exemption or under a permanent air permit, and what your service does if a court or a regulator slows that plant down.
As of Mississippi Today’s May 25, 2026 report, the Justice Department still had until June 15 to decide whether to intervene, and xAI had the same date to respond or move to dismiss. Speed had already produced a docket and a headline. It had not yet produced a federal decision.
Questions worth pinning down
- How many turbines are actually on the ground?
Keep the sites apart. Mississippi Today reported more than 40 mobile turbines in Southaven by May 25, 2026, up from about 18 the previous summer, and state air permits for 41 permanent turbines approved around April 10, 2026. The Memphis Flyer’s 35 gas turbines are a different installation, from March aerial images that do not name a year, and none of these figures should be added together.
- Have regulators already ruled that the turbines broke federal law?
No. SELC and the NAACP say operating without the required permits violates the Clean Air Act. xAI says the turbines do not. Mississippi exempts mobile turbines run for less than a year from state air permits. As of May 25, 2026, the Southaven case was still open.
- Did the Justice Department shut the case down over a war?
No. As of that May 25, 2026 report, the department was still deciding whether to intervene by June 15, citing the Clean Air Act and a January 2025 order on American AI dominance. A failed motion about a war on Iran is not the record that reporting describes.
- Is xAI buying a neighborhood so people cannot sue?
The Guardian reported door-to-door offers in Colonial Hills, a no-lawsuit condition, and unconfirmed targets of 418 homes and 18 agreements. xAI did not confirm them. What Mississippi Today has documented is MZX Tech’s December 23, 2025 purchase of a commercial building at 2400 Stateline Road, not a completed clearance of the neighborhood.
- What was still unresolved heading into June 15, 2026?
Whether the Justice Department would intervene, and whether xAI would respond or move to dismiss. That posture does not tell a buyer the power is legal, illegal, or a stable source of uptime. It only shows that the permit fight, and the social license around it, were still open.