SpaceX to scrap 69 unpermitted gas turbines at Memphis xAI hub by 2027

SpaceX confirmed it will yank the 69 natural gas turbines currently screaming away at its xAI Colossus data center complex near Memphis, but don’t hold your breath — the full removal won’t wrap up until July 2027. The company disclosed the timeline on Thursday amid a lawsuit from the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center, who argue xAI has been running the massive units without proper permits for months.

Right now, those 69 turbines are the heartbeat of the facility, but SpaceX is planning a permanent fix: a 1.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant. The company’s IPO filing reveals a plan to drop $2.8 billion on gas turbines for its data centers over three years. Their legal dodge is creative — SpaceX claims the turbines are exempt because they’re still sitting on the shipping trailers they arrived on. Federal regulators see it differently, pointing out that the sheer size and operational use of the hardware triggers permitting requirements regardless of what they’re parked on.

The location makes this messier than a standard zoning dispute. The site sits in Mississippi, just over the Tennessee border, in one of the most polluted corridors in the United States. The existing turbine fleet has the potential to belch more than 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides into the air annually. The Department of Justice surprisingly weighed in last month, siding with SpaceX by framing the unpermitted operations as a matter of “national, economic, and energy security.”

Permit documents in Mississippi show the permanent plant will consist of 41 turbines, ranging from 16.48 megawatts to 50 megawatts each. These appear to be different models from the current fleet. Adding to the mystery, Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of APR Energy, a temporary power specialist, looks like a misfit here — the APR fleet doesn’t seem destined for this particular site based on archived specs. That suggests those turbines are earmarked for another, still-unannounced project, keeping the door wide open on where Musk’s AI infrastructure ambitions head next.