Project dossier · Memphis, Tennessee

Colossus 2 Under construction

Chip types: B200,B300. Epoch AI estimates ~946 MW.

Key facts

Operator
SpaceXAI
Owner
SpaceXAI
Tenant
Anthropic, Cursor, SpaceXAI
Size
946 MW
Location
Memphis, Tennessee
Stage today
Under construction

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (9 events)

  • 2025-07-22construction
    xAI announced it had begun installing computing infrastructure at its expanded Southwest Memphis data center on Tulane Road, called Colossus 2, saying 110,000 Nvidia GB200 GPUs were being installed. · source
  • 2026-02-13lawsuit
    Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center announced they had sent xAI a 60-day Clean Air Act notice of intent to sue over unpermitted gas turbines in Southaven powering Colossus 2. · source
  • 2026-02-17hearing
    A Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality public hearing in Southaven on xAI's permit for 41 permanent gas turbines drew hundreds of attendees and, per the report, unanimous opposition from residents citing noise and air-pollution concerns. · source
  • 2026-03-10vote
    The Mississippi Environmental Quality Permit Board unanimously granted xAI affiliate MZX Tech an air permit to install 41 methane gas-fired turbines at its Southaven facility, over community opposition. · source
  • 2026-04-14lawsuit
    The Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the national NAACP, represented by SELC and Earthjustice, filed suit against xAI and its subsidiary MZX Tech in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, alleging illegal operation of unpermitted gas turbines under the Clean Air Act. · source
  • 2026-05-06lawsuit
    The NAACP filed a request for a preliminary injunction asking the court to immediately halt xAI's unpermitted air pollution from what it called an illegal power plant, then powering Colossus 2 with 33 unpermitted gas turbines. · source
  • 2026-06-15ruling
    The U.S. Department of Justice moved to intervene in the NAACP lawsuit and asked the court to dismiss it, arguing that shutting off power to the Colossus 2 data center would harm national security because xAI's Grok supports Department of Defense military operations. · source
  • 2026-07-14report
    Records obtained via public-records request (Trinity Consultants emails to Mississippi regulators) revealed xAI had operated 59 unpermitted gas turbines for Colossus 2, roughly double the 27 the company had publicly acknowledged in January, with at least 57 sited in Southaven, Mississippi. · source
  • 2026-07-30ruling
    The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality issued an agreed order setting a retirement schedule for xAI's 69 temporary trailer-mounted turbines at the Southaven site, requiring decommissioning to begin August 18, 2026, with most units retired by April 2027 and the most recently added by July 14, 2027, after supply-chain delays to the 41 permanent turbines. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (0 filed · 11 places to look)

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, -90.030 — 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 2”, aigridwatch.com/projects/colossus-2, 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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