19 new gas turbines. That's how many portable generating units xAI added to its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, Tennessee, according to internal emails reviewed by Wired, even while the company faces an active lawsuit over air quality violations at the same site.
The legal dispute centers on Colossus's existing fleet of gas-fired generators. Memphis's Shelby County already fails to meet federal air quality standards, and environmental advocates filed suit arguing xAI's turbines operate well beyond the hours permitted under their "emergency backup" classification - a designation that caps how many hours they're legally allowed to run. The case is still pending.
Continuing to expand the turbine count mid-lawsuit is either confident or reckless, depending on how the courts rule. The business logic is straightforward: xAI needs compute now. Training its Grok models requires enormous electricity, Memphis's power grid can't deliver it fast enough from utilities, and portable gas turbines are the fastest way to bridge that gap. Waiting for grid infrastructure upgrades would cost months; deploying turbines costs days.
The downside is meaningful. If a court orders xAI to curtail turbine hours or shut down unpermitted units, the company's Memphis training capacity takes a direct hit. For an AI lab trying to keep pace with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind, losing access to significant compute infrastructure mid-race is not a small problem. The company has not commented publicly on the new additions.