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it home reported on august 29 that musk’s ai startup xai is facing criticism from environmental and health advocates because the company used gas turbines in its data center without obtaining the necessary permits, causing air pollution in memphis, tennessee.

"despite installing nearly 20 gas turbines with a total capacity of approximately 100 megawatts, enough to power approximately 50,000 homes, xai does not appear to have applied for any air permits for these turbines," the southern environmental law center wrote in a letter to the u.s. environmental protection agency and health department in the area where the data center is located in shelby county.

the environmental legal advocacy group called on the county health department to verify whether xai was operating the turbines without an air permit and take enforcement action. they said the gas turbines emit large amounts of gas, making memphis' already poor air quality even worse.

musk said late last month that a batch of powerful nvidia h100 chips had begun training xai’s grok ai model, calling the tennessee data center “the most powerful ai training cluster in the world.” he added that the facility will train the world’s most powerful ai by december.

the startup, founded by musk last year, was valued at more than $24 billion in may this year and is seen as a competitor to openai, google, and anthropic. earlier this month, the company launched the grok 2 series of language models.