Residents of an American city are outraged by noise from Musk's data center—the billionaire has decided to buy hundreds of homes
Kyiv • UNN
Residents of Southaven are complaining about the hum and vibrations from the xAI data center. The company may buy 418 homes near the facility.
Residents of Southaven, Mississippi, were outraged by the noise from businessman Elon Musk’s data center. According to media reports, amid the conflict, the billionaire wants to buy 418 surrounding homes, UNN reports.
The enormous MACROHARDRR data center in Southaven, United States, belongs to xAI, a company founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk. Its high-performance computers train artificial intelligence. The center is located just a few kilometers from the giant Colossus supercomputer in Memphis.
Such extensive computing capacity also requires a huge amount of electricity. For this purpose, a gas-turbine power plant was built at xAI’s data center in Southaven. It is precisely these turbines that have become a bone of contention with residents of the nearby Colonial Hills neighborhood—the constant hum deprives them of peace and quiet.
In June, three local residents went to court. They accuse xAI and the operating company MZX Tech of regularly making the facility a source of noise and vibrations. One of the plaintiffs, Jason Haley, described the sound in a conversation with the American television network CBS as a constant buzzing, "like an airplane" hovering over his home.
Now the conflict is taking an unusual turn: real estate agents acting on behalf of Musk’s subsidiary MZX Tech LLC are approaching homeowners on the outskirts and offering them money for their properties. According to a report by the British newspaper The Guardian, the figure may be 418 homes.
It is reported that 18 owners have already signed agreements expressing their intention to sell their homes, while five purchase-and-sale transactions have already been officially completed. xAI itself did not confirm the figure of 418 potential home purchases and rejected accusations of noise pollution. As the newspaper writes, the company said it was "very interested in good neighborly relations" and, among other things, had installed noise barriers.
Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite, meanwhile, hopes that the data center will have a positive impact on the city’s development because it "will bring unprecedented tax revenue to DeSoto County taxpayers, improving the quality of life for all residents," The Guardian quotes him as saying.