Residents of a Mississippi neighborhood living with the constant rumble of gas turbines powering Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence operations are facing an unusual offer. The company wants to buy their homes, but there is a condition: homeowners must agree not to join a lawsuit over the noise.
Real estate agents representing xAI have been going door to door in Colonial Hills, a neighborhood on the western side of Southaven, Mississippi, offering to purchase properties. According to a recording of a conversation reviewed by The Guardian, one realtor told a resident that the company aims to buy 418 homes, with 18 homeowners already agreeing to sell. The company has not responded to questions about these figures or the extent of its proposed acquisitions.
The purchases could potentially cover almost the entire neighborhood, where the average home is valued at about $180,000. For xAI, the cost could be relatively small compared with the scale of Musk’s ambitions to build what he envisions as the world’s largest cluster of AI supercomputers.
The homes would be used to accommodate company employees as xAI expands its operations across Southaven and nearby Memphis, Tennessee, according to the realtor and Southaven’s mayor. Three major data centers have emerged in the area over the past two years, bringing an expansion that some residents say has come at the expense of their quality of life.
At the center of the dispute is a former Duke Energy site housing 69 temporary gas turbines that supply power to the new data centers. Residents have complained about the persistent noise from the turbines, which they say were installed without the required permits.
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“It sounds like an airplane engine but it’s continuous, it’s incredibly loud,” said Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher who lives about two miles from the xAI site.
“I’ve been woken up at 2am by it, I’ve been woken up at 3am by it. I sometimes have to just get away from it because it makes me so angry.”
Rose said she was shocked when the facility began producing a continuous low rumble in August last year.
“All of a sudden there was a plant there,” she said.
She now fears that the company’s property purchases could extend across the neighborhood.
“And now I get the feeling they are trying to expand the buyout to the entire neighborhood. It will become Elon Musk’s little playground, basically. Elonville.”
The controversy comes as Musk pushes to expand the computing infrastructure needed to develop his Grok AI chatbot. Since July 2024, xAI has built three large data centers in the Memphis and Southaven area, which straddles the Tennessee-Mississippi border. The facilities are Colossus I, Colossus II and Macrohardrr.
Musk has been spending up to four nights a week in an Airstream trailer in the Memphis area as he personally oversees the construction, according to local reports.
“We’re seeing the fastest growth I’ve ever seen in my life for Grok bot,” Musk said during a SpaceX earnings call this month. “I’ve never seen anything grow this fast.”
The company’s expansion has become part of a wider debate over the environmental and community costs of building data centers across the United States. While technology companies argue that these facilities are essential to competing in artificial intelligence, residents in several communities have raised concerns about noise, energy consumption and the effects on their neighborhoods.
In Southaven, three residents filed a lawsuit against xAI in June, alleging “near-constant noise, vibrations and other nuisance-level harms” caused by the nearby power plant. The company denies the allegations and has previously said it wants to maintain good relations with its neighbors. It has also said it has adjusted power output and constructed sound-dampening walls to address noise concerns.
Jason Haley, one of the plaintiffs, said he had never considered himself an activist before the turbines began disrupting his life. He has owned his home for 20 years, and the power plant is about half a mile away.
“There’s a high-pitched hum and then another sound like an airplane over your house,” he said. “It’s been so torturous I can’t sleep, I just leave the house or turn on some music until I fall asleep completely exhausted. It drives you insane. You also lose hope because you’re being ignored or dismissed. There’s no escape.”
Haley said repeated attempts to get answers from Southaven’s mayor failed to resolve the problem. He was also angered by Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican and supporter of AI development, who argued that restricting data centers would amount to “surrendering the future of technology to China.”
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Haley eventually filed the lawsuit and began posting videos on social media documenting the noise levels around his home.
“I thought I’d make some noise of my own because of this bullshit,” he said.
“I didn’t know anything about Elon, still don’t know the man. But our governor saying I don’t love America because I don’t like being tortured by noise? That is just asinine and ignorant. We’ve got to hold people accountable when they are harming other people, I don’t care who you voted for, who you pray for or who your favorite team is.”
The dispute has now taken a new turn with the company’s offer to purchase homes in Colonial Hills. In a letter delivered to residents, MZX, the xAI subsidiary operating the site, said it “requires property for its business purposes” and is willing to buy nearby homes. The offer, however, includes a contractual requirement that homeowners agree not to participate in Haley’s class-action lawsuit.
Property records in DeSoto County show that MZX has purchased five homes in the neighborhood since October 9. The early sales suggest that at least some residents are prepared to leave rather than continue living near the turbines.
Gavin Foust, a neighbor of Haley, said some elderly residents living nearby had recently agreed to sell their home. He expects more homeowners to consider the offer as the noise dispute continues.
“They are ideal neighbors and planned to live their rest of their lives in that house but they want to get out of Dodge now because they don’t want to be bothered by these turbines,” Foust said.