xAI offers to buy Southaven homes if owners stay out of lawsuit
Agents have gone door to door in Colonial Hills, where a realtor cited a target of 418 homes and county records show 5 sales since October 9.
In brief
- A realtor cited a target of 418 Colonial Hills homes, with 18 owners agreeing to sell
- MZX has bought 5 homes since October 9, according to DeSoto county records
- Three residents sued xAI in June over power plant noise; the company denies the claims
An xAI subsidiary is offering to buy homes near its power plant in Southaven, Mississippi, if owners agree not to join a noise lawsuit against the company, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
The offers tie property purchases directly to pending litigation in Colonial Hills, a neighborhood on Southaven’s western edge where residents have complained for more than a year about round-the-clock noise from gas turbines that power Elon Musk’s data centers.
Real estate agents have been going door to door on xAI’s behalf. A realtor told one resident there is a target to buy 418 homes, with 18 owners already agreeing to sell, according to a recording heard by The Guardian. Five homes in the neighborhood have been bought by MZX, the subsidiary that operates the site, since October 9, according to DeSoto county records.
In a letter handed to residents, MZX said it “requires property for its business purposes” and would buy nearby houses on the contractual condition that sellers do not join the class action. The realtor and the local mayor said the homes would house xAI staff. The average house price in the area is about $180,000, The Guardian reported.
Three residents filed the lawsuit in June, alleging “near-constant noise, vibrations and other nuisance-level harms” from the plant. xAI denies all claims in the suit and has said it cares “deeply about being good neighbors,” pointing to changes in its power output and sound-dampening walls. The company did not respond to The Guardian’s questions about the purchase numbers or its plans for the neighborhood.
The plant, a former Duke Energy site, houses 69 temporary gas turbines that began running in August 2025. The US Environmental Protection Agency has determined that dozens of the turbines ran without permits required by federal law, and has said enforcement is a matter for the state. In July, xAI agreed with state regulators to replace them with a permanent gas-fired facility by next summer.
Since July 2024, xAI has built three data centers, Colossus I, Colossus II and Macrohardrr, across the Memphis and Southaven area to develop its Grok chatbot. In April, environmental groups and the NAACP sued in federal court to stop use of the turbines. The company, which became SpaceXAI in July and has since been rebranded SpaceXSI, is part of Musk’s SpaceX, which Musk said on October 25 had closed $40 billion of debt to buy GPUs.