Elon Musk's xAI has added 19 portable natural gas turbines to its Colossus 2 data center in Southaven, Mississippi over the past two months, according to internal emails obtained by WIRED through a public records request. The move expands the site's total turbine count to 46 and adds more than 500 megawatts of generating capacity—all while the company faces legal challenges over air quality and permitting.
The timing is notable: eight of the 19 new turbines, representing over 200 megawatts of output, were installed after the NAACP, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), and Earthjustice filed suit in April. Those groups alleged xAI was operating 27 gas turbines at the site without proper air permits, violating the Clean Air Act.
Emails between Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality and Trinity Consultants—shared with WIRED by the SELC—document the turbine installations between late March and early May. A spreadsheet included in the correspondence lists the megawatt capacity of each turbine. SELC lawyer Ben Grillot said his organization initially spotted six additional turbines during an April drone flyover. Only after obtaining the MDEQ emails did the team realize the full scope: 19 new units.
Regulators in both Mississippi and Tennessee have cited a Clean Air Act provision allowing non-stationary turbines to operate for a year without permits. Last July, Memphis's health department granted a permit for turbines at Colossus 1 (located in Tennessee's Boxtown, a historically Black neighborhood with documented air quality problems). In March, Mississippi's MDEQ approved an air permit for 41 turbines at Colossus 2, despite community opposition.
Neither xAI nor the MDEQ has clarified whether the 19 newly installed turbines are covered by that March permit. The company and regulators did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment. MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer told Mississippi Today that the portable turbines are equipped with emission-control technology and that the agency is evaluating when to restrict additional units.
xAI's response to the NAACP's emergency injunction request framed the turbines as critical infrastructure. The company argued that the data centers powered by them "are essential to the operation of cutting-edge artificial intelligence and other computing tools used by the U.S. government and millions of users worldwide" and would have to "precipitously shut down" without the temporary generation equipment. The day the NAACP filed for injunction, Anthropic announced a computing agreement with xAI for all resources at Colossus 1, and Musk posted that SpaceXAI training had "already moved" to Colossus 2.
Abre' Conner, NAACP Director of Environmental and Climate Justice, told WIRED: "Any company that disregards the obvious environmental and health concerns of Black communities to supposedly power a future that will help us all is sending a clear message about who it intends to serve in that future."