Wired: Communities Near xAI's Pollution-Cited Memphis Data Centers Are Furious as SpaceX IPO Prices at $135
Summary
Wired profiles residents near Elon Musk's xAI data centers in Boxtown, South Memphis — a 90% Black community first settled by freed enslaved people in 1863 — as SpaceX (which owns xAI) priced its landmark $1.75 trillion IPO on June 11. The NAACP sued xAI in April for Clean Air Act violations from gas turbines the EPA ruled were operating illegally, yet SpaceX's IPO prospectus reveals plans for an additional $2.8 billion in turbine purchases over three years. The feature crystallizes the collision between AI infrastructure expansion and environmental justice at the moment the AI sector stages its largest-ever public offering.
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NEW: on the eve of SpaceX's IPO, i spoke to folks in the memphis area still fighting the company's polluting data centers there, which are now also being leased by Anthropic "We’re the extracted and exploited colony of …
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The SpaceX IPO is going to mint thousands of new millionaires. Elon Musk alone is going to make hundreds of billions of dollars. Who'd not getting rich? Anyone who lives near the pollution-spewing turbines that power the…
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Originally reported by wired.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Wired: Communities Near xAI's Pollution-Cited Memphis Data Centers Are Furious as SpaceX IPO Prices at $135