Elon musk and the xAI logo.
Vincent Feuray | Afp | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s xAI scored a victory in Mississippi, where regulators on Tuesday authorized the artificial intelligence company to build a power plant with 41 natural gas-burning turbines in the town of Southaven to power its nearby data centers.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality “voted to approve the permit” for xAI subsidiary MZX Tech LLC “after careful consideration of all public comments and community concerns,” MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer told CNBC via email.
The NAACP and other civil rights and environmental advocates tried to get the meeting delayed, arguing that it would conflict with some residents’ efforts to vote in the state’s primary elections, being held on the same day.
“We are outraged that, despite the community’s clear demand to move the Election Day hearing, MDEQ chose to bulldoze through a decision that silenced the very residents most harmed by it,” said Abre’ Conner, director of environmental and climate justice at NAACP, in a statement from her organization and the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Now owned by SpaceX after a merger was announced in February, xAI has been using more than a dozen temporary turbines for months at the facility in Southaven, claiming that no federal permit has been required. The company has two data centers — Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 — in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the Mississippi state line.
Workers at Elon Musk’s xAI facility, which houses a large supercomputer known as Colossus, used for artificial intelligence data processing, in Memphis, Tennessee, Sept. 11, 2025.
Karen Pulfer Focht | Reuters
As Musk pursues a potential mammoth IPO for SpaceX, which was valued at $1.25 trillion after the merger, he’s counting on the area in and around Memphis to supply the power and resources necessary to build out the combined company’s AI infrastructure.
In addition to its effort to build a power plant in Southaven, xAI also plans to construct another large data center there, dubbed Macrohardrr, in a warehouse that was previously a GXO Logistics facility. Residents in Southaven and Memphis have protested xAI’s plans and operations for months due to existing and expected air and noise pollution.
“The permit issued by MDEQ has a number of serious flaws that violate federal law, run afoul of the agency’s own policies, and put families in North Mississippi and Memphis at risk,” the NAACP and the SELC said in their joint statement on Tuesday.
XAI didn’t respond to a request for comment. Schaefer from MDEQ said by email, “The draft permit met all legal and technical requirements for issuance.”
The NAACP, represented by SELC, plans to sue xAI over the company’s prior and ongoing use of natural gas-burning turbines without federal permits.
Opponents argue that xAI understated the amount of pollution that will be emitted by its turbines in its permit application,