Elon Musk’s AI Company Installs Converted Jet Engines To Help Power Its Memphis Data Center

Elon Musk’s xAI has turned to refurbished jet engines to help power its Memphis data center as tech companies race to generate their own electricity.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that eight converted jet-engine units are installed at xAI’s Mississippi site, citing permits and satellite imagery. The state air permit places the units, which burn natural gas, at the company’s Southaven power plant, and the NAACP and two local groups are appealing that permit.

A separate NAACP lawsuit, which a federal judge kept alive Oct. 30, concerns temporary turbines at the same site, not the eight converted units.

A July 30 state order says the 41 permitted turbines “will be the permanent power source” for xAI’s computing operations. The plant would supply Colossus 2, the company’s data center in Memphis, Tennessee, just over the state line, the Southern Environmental Law Center said in an April release.

Missouri-based ProEnergy made the eight units, each rated at 50 megawatts in the state air permit that was issued March 11.

ProEnergy builds each unit around a refurbished CF6-80C2 aircraft-engine core, a model used in Boeing 747s, the company said in a 2023 release.

“If anybody’s ever flown on a Boeing 747, it’s the exact same aircraft engine,” ProEnergy executive Landon Tessmer said at a September conference in Denver, according to the Times.

Energy analyst and writer David Blackmon said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation that Musk promotes solar but relies on natural gas at most of his big industrial sites.

“But he makes consistent, copious use of natural gas generation at most of his major industrial facilities in Texas, Memphis and elsewhere. It’s a real dichotomy of rhetoric vs. business practice,” he added.