xAI aims to buy 418 Mississippi homes to settle noise suit

The target: 418 homes. That is the figure one of xAI's real-estate agents named in recordings obtained by The Guardian, and eighteen households in Southaven, Mississippi have already agreed to sell.

Buyers must sign two documents. One is an initial real estate contract. The other is a release that waives 'all claims' tied to the class-action lawsuit three neighbors filed in June against xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech over the noise and vibrations from the gas turbines powering the company's data centers.

Elizabeth Rose, one of the residents the agents approached, described the plant: 'It sounds like an airplane engine but it's continuous, it's incredibly loud. I've been woken up at 2am by it, I've been woken up at 3am by it.' She called the proposed expansion 'Elon Musk's little playground, basically. Elonville.'

The plant feeds a cluster of xAI data centers across the state line in Tennessee: Colossus, which went online in September 2024, Colossus 2, and a third called MACROHARDDR. The June suit, brought by Jason Haley, Preston Herrington and Taylor Logsdon, estimates more than 10,000 people live inside the affected area, which is run on 69 unpermitted gas turbines as of 31 July.

Southaven's mayor, Darren Musselwhite, told Haley that he 'may want to consider selling your home.' MZX Tech donated $1.3 million to local police in February. The buyout letter denies the allegations but offers to purchase anyway, with amounts reportedly keyed to Zillow appraisals.

A separate April lawsuit from the NAACP alleges Clean Air Act violations at the plant; the Trump administration has moved to intervene on national-security grounds. Three of the researchers and operators we track in our Who's Who directory posted the Guardian piece the day it ran.