xAI has received permission to install 41 natural gas turbines at a site in Mississippi that will generate 1.2GW to power its data centers in the area.

Elon Musk’s AI company, maker of the Grok chatbot, was granted a Clean Air Act permit by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) at a meeting on Tuesday.

The turbines, which will be installed at a former Duke Energy power plant site in Southaven, will be used to power xAI’s Colossus 2 data center, located a few hundred meters from Tulane Road, across the state boundary in the Whitehaven district of Memphis. They will also supply power to the firm’s upcoming Colossus 3 data center in Mississippi.

xAI purchased the Southaven land in July 2025.

In a statement posted on X, the Musk-owned social media platform, which is also part of xAI, the company said it was “thrilled that MDEQ approved our permanent construction permit unlocking 1.2GW of self-generating power capacity.

“This permit not only meets all state and federal permitting regulations but goes above and beyond what is required by law. This permit will ensure that ratepayers don’t pay one extra cent in their energy bills and powers the future of AI innovation through Grok.”

xAI uses its data centers in Tennessee to power its Grok AI chatbot. The company came to Memphis in 2024, launching its Colossus supercomputer in a new data center housed in a former Electrolux factory in Memphis’s Boxtown district.

It purchased the site for Colossus 2 last March, and the data center came online in January. Despite Musk claiming it offered 1GW of capacity at launch, satellite imagery taken in January reportedly showed it had cooling equipment installed capable of managing 350MW.

A third data center is in the works, located in Southaven, and the company is also spending $659m on another building to be constructed on an adjacent land parcel. Musk says his company, which is now part of SpaceX, will eventually have access to 2GW of compute power from the cluster, and the gas turbines will be key to supplying this.

The company’s use of gas turbines in Memphis has been the subject of much controversy, with environmental and civil rights campaigners claiming xAI installed the machines before the correct permits were in place, and stating that they are impacting air quality in what is one of the area’s poorest neighborhoods.

Campaigners say MDEQ rushed its decision and that it should have given residents more notice of the meeting where the turbines were being discussed. It was announced on March 5, five days before it took place, and took place in Jackson, Mississippi, a three-hour drive from the affected community.

“We’re extremely disappointed in MDEQ’s decision to greenlight this inadequate permit for xAI’s power plant, which fails to address the significant concerns about the impact of these added turbines will have on communities in North Mississippi as well as South Memphis,” said Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at advocacy group the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“Mississippi state regulators appear to be more interested in fast-tracking xAI’s personal power plant than conducting a thorough review of its impacts and having meaningful engagement with the families that will be forced to live with this dirty facility - and its pollution - in their communities.”