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3 months ago
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xAI has purchased a former natural gas power plant close to the site of its new data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
Property records show the company has bought the land, which formerly housed a Duke Energy power station.
It is on Stanton Road, across the state border from Memphis in Mississippi, and six miles from Tulane Road, where Elon Musk’s AI company is planning a one million sq ft data center to house GPUs, which will form part of its Colossus supercomputer.
First reported by the Daily Memphian, the power station has been purchased by MZT Tech LLC, a company based in the same Palo Alto, California, office as xAI. According to records, xAI is the managing member of the LLC.
The 114-acre Southhaven plant was built in 2003 by Duke Energy, and at one time, could provide 640MW of power.
It sold the site, along with seven other natural gas power plants in the southeastern US, to Kgen Partners in 2004 for $475 million. Satellite images suggest little infrastructure remains at the site, but it has utility lines connecting to Memphis Light, Gas, and Water and Texas Gas Lines, which in turn connects into the 200MW Southaven natural gas power plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
According to the DeSoto County property register, xAI appears to have bought the property from Julie James for $10.
DCD has contacted xAI for comment. Speculation that the company had purchased the power plant has been swirling for some time, with company staff having been spotted at the site.
Speaking earlier this month, xAI’s Brent Mayo, who manages the company’s operations in Memphis, said: “We are not publicly disclosing what’s happening there [at the power plant]. There’s a lot of wheels turning around what that could be and what we’re looking at. Everything is still on the table right now.”
xAI already runs a data center in Memphis, and recently gained permission to permanently install natural gas turbines at the site, much to the chagrin of environmental and civil rights campaigners.
The company has apparently been thinking outside the box to meet its power needs, with Musk stating a couple of weeks ago that it intends to buy a power plant from abroad and import it into the US to provide energy for its data centers.
