SpaceX will operate 69 disputed turbines for xAI until July 2027

SpaceX said on Thursday that it will remove all 69 gas turbines now powering xAI’s Colossus data centers near Memphis, but not until July 2027. The company is replacing the temporary units with a permanent 1.2 GW natural gas power plant.

Permitting has become an infrastructure risk

The NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center have sued xAI over operating the turbines without permits. SpaceX, which acquired xAI in February, argues that no permits are required because the units remain mounted on their delivery trailers.

Federal regulations point the other way: turbines of this size and in this mode of operation require permits regardless of their mounting. The units sit just across the Tennessee border in Mississippi, south of Memphis, within one of the most polluted regions in the United States.

The fleet has the potential to emit more than 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides annually. The dispute adds a regulatory dimension to Anthropic’s lease of Colossus 1 capacity, because access to compute also depends on the legal and physical resilience of its power supply.

A larger permanent fleet

Mississippi permit documents show that the new plant will use 41 turbines rated from 16.48 MW to 50 MW. They appear to differ from the 69 units currently operating, although TechCrunch could not verify the models in the temporary fleet.

SpaceX disclosed in its IPO filing that it expects to buy $2.8 billion in gas turbines for data centers over the next three years. Elon Musk also acquired APR Energy, a provider of temporary natural gas generation, earlier this year.

The Department of Justice described the turbines as a matter of “national, economic, and energy security.”

APR Energy’s known fleet also appears different from the equipment listed for the permanent Colossus plant. That suggests the planned turbine purchases may support another project that has not yet been announced.

For businesses buying AI capacity, power should now be assessed alongside processors, networking and price. Contracts need safeguards for permitting delays, environmental litigation and energy-source changes, because compute availability can be constrained long before a data center reaches its technical limit.