Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company has purchased the site of a former natural gas power plant near its massive data center project in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Property records show a subsidiary of Musk's xAI purchased a 114-acre parcel in Southaven, Mississippi, that once housed a Duke Energy generating station, the Daily Memphian reports. The site sits just six miles from a 1M SF data center xAI is building in Memphis — the firm’s second in the city, built to host xAI’s Colossus AI computing cluster.
Duke Energy developed a 640-megawatt natural gas power plant on the property in 2003, selling it the following year to KGen Partners as part of a larger portfolio of power generation assets.
Today, there is little infrastructure remaining on the site, according to the Daily Memphian, citing satellite photos. But the property contains transmission infrastructure connecting to the area utilities that provide power to xAI’s Memphis facilities. According to Memphis television station ABC24, xAI has already applied for easements that would allow it to begin running transmission lines through nearby properties.
xAI’s purchase of the former plant — a deal that reportedly cost the firm just $10 — follows weeks of media speculation after xAI employees were spotted on the property. xAI also acquired another nearby property in Southaven earlier this month.
The company has revealed little about its plans for the site, with xAI Memphis Vice President of Operations Brent Mayo telling local news station WMC that it is still determining exactly how it will utilize the property.
“We are not publicly disclosing what’s happening there,” he said. “There’s a lot of wheels turning around what that could be and what we’re looking at. Everything is still on the table right now.”
The acquisition of the former Mississippi plant continues xAI’s rapid, and sometimes controversial, expansion of data center and power infrastructure in the Memphis area. Ultimately, xAI has stated that it intends to host 1 million GPUs — graphics processing units — in Memphis.
The company’s first Memphis data center, built last year on the site of a former Electrolux factory in the city’s Boxtown district, houses 100,000 GPUs, although that figure may eventually double. The AI startup's second facility will be in the city’s Whitehaven district, on a site the firm acquired in March for $80M.
xAI has come under fire for using gas turbines at its initial Memphis facility. The presence of 35 gas turbines on the site capable of generating 422 MW of power was revealed in April through aerial photographs published by the Southern Environmental Law Center. According to SELC, xAI is only permitted to operate 15 generators on the site. The group said the extra 20 generators constitute a violation of the Clean Air Act.
Environmental and civil rights groups have filed legal action against the company for what they say is its use of unpermitted on-site generation.
Musk also indicated earlier this month that the company is planning to purchase a power plant from outside the U.S. and bring it into the country to help power its data centers.
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