SpaceX Agrees to Remove Temporary Gas Turbines at Colossus Data Center By 2027 - Gizmodo

SpaceX has agreed to begin removing the temporary gas turbines powering part of its massive Colossus AI data center complex. But the last of them may stay up until July 2027. Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite, and AI company announced Thursday that it had entered into an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality establishing a timeline for removing all 69 mobile turbines at its power facility in Southaven, Mississippi. The Southaven power site sits just across the state line from Colossus 2, one of SpaceXAI’s data centers in Memphis. The company uses the Colossus facilities to train and operate xAI’s Grok models and has also agreed to lease computing capacity to other AI companies like Anthropic, at least for now. SpaceXAI said it would start removing the temporary turbines as early as August as it brings a permanent 1.2 gigawatt natural-gas power plant online. Still, the agreement gives the company until July 2027 to clear all of them from the site. “The 1.2 GW permanent power plant currently under construction will consist of 41 permanent turbines authorized under a Clean Air Act permit, granted to SpaceXAI in March 2026,” the company said. The agreement arrives following a legal dispute questioning whether the company could operate the turbines without a permit in the first place. In April, the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued xAI, alleging that the company was operating 27 gas turbines at the time without a permit and polluting surrounding communities. SpaceXAI has argued that because the turbines are mounted on flatbed trailers, they qualify for a temporary-mobile exemption allowing them to operate without an air permit for up to a year. The Justice Department has sided with xAI in the lawsuit. The department claimed that “the NAACP threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.” AI companies have increasingly turned to gas turbines because of the enormous amounts of electricity data centers require to run around the clock. SpaceX acquired xAI in February before its record-breaking IPO this summer. This merger was a key part of SpaceX’s pitch to investors. They claim that the combined company has future earnings potential that frankly has never been claimed by any company in history. In its IPO filing, SpaceX estimated that it is pursuing a $28.5 trillion total addressable market, with roughly $26.5 trillion of that expected to come from AI alone. The filing also revealed that SpaceX had agreed to purchase nearly $3 billion worth of gas turbines in the coming years. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.