Project dossier · Memphis, Tennessee

Colossus 1 Operating

Chip types: H100,H200,B200. Epoch AI estimates ~340 MW.

Key facts

Operator
SpaceXAI
Owner
SpaceXAI
Tenant
Anthropic
Size
340 MW
Location
Memphis, Tennessee
Stage today
Operating

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (13 events)

  • 2024-04-01construction
    Construction began in April 2024 on the Colossus 1 facility, retrofitting the former Electrolux building in South Memphis. · source
  • 2024-06-01announcement
    xAI selected Memphis, Tennessee as the site for its Colossus supercomputer, to be built on the former Electrolux factory site in South Memphis. · source
  • 2024-08-01operational
    Colossus 1 reached its first operational milestone in August 2024 with 25,000 H100 GPUs drawing approximately 35 MW. · source
  • 2024-09-03operational
    xAI announced Colossus came online over Labor Day weekend with 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, built in 122 days, consuming approximately 150 MW and up to 1 million gallons of water daily for cooling. · source
  • 2024-09-11coverage
    NPR reported on how Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk's xAI supercomputer, covering pollution concerns from the facility's gas turbine power generation. · source
  • 2025-02-01operational
    Colossus 1 expanded in February 2025 to 150,000 H100 GPUs plus 50,000 H200 GPUs, reaching approximately 278 MW of IT power. · source
  • 2025-07-01operational
    Colossus 1 added 30,000 B200 GPUs in July 2025, bringing total IT power to approximately 340 MW. · source
  • 2026-03-01permit
    A permanent 1.2 GW natural-gas turbine plant received a Mississippi Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit under the Clean Air Act in March 2026, authorizing 41 permanent turbines for the Colossus complex. · source
  • 2026-04-01lawsuit
    The NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center filed a federal lawsuit in April 2026 alleging xAI was operating 27 gas turbines without proper air permits at its Southaven, Mississippi power site serving the Colossus complex. · source
  • 2026-05-06financing
    Anthropic agreed to rent all computing capacity at SpaceX's Colossus 1, accessing over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and more than 300 MW of AI compute; financial terms were not disclosed. · source
  • 2026-06-05financing
    Google agreed to rent approximately 110,000 GPUs from SpaceX at Colossus 2 for $920 million monthly through June 2029, as reported by The New York Times. · source
  • 2026-06-16ruling
    The U.S. Department of Justice moved to intervene in and dismiss the NAACP's Clean Air Act lawsuit against xAI's Colossus data center gas turbines, as reported by The New York Times. · source
  • 2026-08-01environmental
    SpaceX agreed with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to remove all 69 temporary mobile gas turbines at the Southaven power site by July 2027, with removal beginning as early as August 2026. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)

Permits already on file (1)

Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.

  • 2026-03-01
    A permanent 1.2 GW natural-gas turbine plant received a Mississippi Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit under the Clean Air Act in March 2026, authorizing 41 permanent turbines for the Colossus complex. · source

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

  • Tennessee TDECThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
  • TDEC DataviewersSearchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

  • Search Memphis planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
  • Search Memphis property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.

Utility & grid records

The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.

Federal databases

Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.

  • EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 35.070, -90.050 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
  • EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
  • EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.

These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.

Recent news

55 stories tracked since 2026-07-16 across 24 outlets. 42× Local officials are moving to pause or block the project. 7× A community is pushing back on a nearby data center. Most recent: “Memphis councilman addresses interrupted council meeting, postponed data center moratorium vote” (localmemphis.com, 2026-10-08).

+43 more on the story tracker.

Automated news aggregation, not human-verified — follow each link to the original outlet. Part of the story tracker, 55 headlines archived.

Around here

Other tracked projects in Tennessee

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Colossus 1”, aigridwatch.com/projects/colossus-1, retrieved 2026-10-11.

As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing

A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.

Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).

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