Earlier today Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order requiring data center projects to be regulated with “strict guardrails to hold data center developers accountable to the public interest” in areas of energy costs, environmental impact, and workforce development.
This action is just one on a growing list of legislation fueled by pushback against AI data centers across the country.
This evening, the Memphis City Council acted on a year-long moratorium on new data centers.
Samuel Hardiman, The Daily Memphian:
Memphis, a city known nationwide for Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI’s data centers, may finally take legislative steps to pause data center development.
At its Aug. 18 committee meeting, the Memphis City Council is poised to discuss an ordinance that would declare, “a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, and issuance of zoning, land use, building, and other associated infrastructure permits for data center developments within the City of Memphis.”
Right across the state line from the ever-expanding Colossus II site is 2875 Stanton Road, home to a fleet of gas-burning turbines that generate electricity to keep SpaceXAI (and its customers) online.
The pushback in Southaven, Mississippi over the Stanton Road site has been growing. Just this weekend, there was a public event addressing the issue, hosted by the NAACP and State Rep. Justin J. Pearson.
Tonight, the company announced (in a statement that was also emailed to members of the press, including yours truly) that it will be removing its temporary turbines over the next year:
Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.
In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”
The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes.
Last year, Elon Musk promised that xAI would donate a large sum to the Memphis-Shelby County school system to help rehabilitate four schools near its data centers. Laura Testino reported on the commitment at the time:
In its proposal to the district, xAI offered support for four different schools in areas of Whitehaven and Westwood near its data centers:
- John P. Freeman Optional School
- Fairley High School
- Mitchell High School
- Westwood High School
At each school, the company has proposed upgrades to the HVAC units that heat and cool the schools, plus improvements to plumbing, lighting and windows. XAI has also offered to paint at the schools.
This CNBC video provides a look at what happens when a massive AI data center is built in your neighborhood.
Google is building an AI data center in West Memphis, Arkansas, across the Mississippi River from Memphis. (I know, it’s a very original city name.) Google joins SpaceXAI and others in the Mid-South for cheap land and abundant water, but it faces the same core challenges — mainly, how to feed its huge collection of power-hungry hardware.
When the project was announced, details about power generation were sparse. Today, we know a bit more. Will Conkling and Christopher Scott at Google:
Alexandria Mansfield, writing for the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, via Yahoo Finance:
Elon Musk has acquired Jacksonville-based APR Energy, according to a Federal Trade Commission filing that surfaced the deal weeks after it closed with no public statement from either side.
The FTC’s early termination notice, transaction number 20261350 and dated May 14, lists Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the acquired party, with New APR Energy, LLC listed as the acquired entity.
Had a productive meeting with SpaceXAI President Michael Nicolls on Monday.
In the meeting they committed to resuming construction on the recycled wastewater treatment facility no later than Q1 2027.
This facility will offset water usage from both SpaceXAI and TVA. Our engagement that led to this commitment will continue until the facility is complete.
Samuel Hardiman, for The Daily Memphian:
The facility was expected to treat wastewater from the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson Wastewater Treatment Plant and turn it into a suitable industrial coolant, replacing the hundreds of thousands of gallons of freshwater the company uses each day. In February, it used 840,000 gallons of water a day, according to bills obtained by Protect Our Aquifer and provided to The Daily Memphian.
SpaceX and the NAACP are in a legal battle over the use of turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, for powering the Colossus II data center in Memphis. This week, the Department of Justice got involved, as reported by Molly Taft at Wired:
In a filing, the agency sided with Elon Musk’s company, saying attempts to stop xAI from running the natural gas turbines “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”
Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian, following up on April’s news that xAI was pausing work on a water treatment plant that would take wastewater, clean it, and use it for cooling at its Colossus I site:
Memphis City Attorney Tannera Gibson said the company has recently assured the city that it would be completing the plant.
“The feelings are pretty positive and pretty strong based on recent conversations,” Gibson said.
SpaceX has lined up another compute deal ahead of its historic IPO, this time with Google. The company announced the deal in a regulatory filing on Friday.
Under the terms of the deal, Google will pay SpaceX $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029 for access to “approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components.”
The deal is similar in length and scope to the one SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May. As part of that deal, Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through 2029 to rent all the available compute from its Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee that xAI — now part of SpaceX — originally built for its own artificial intelligence efforts.