The highest Democrat on the Home Committee on Vitality and Commerce is demanding that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk present a tour of his firm’s xAI knowledge facilities and energy vegetation in and round Memphis, Tennessee.
“Individuals are involved about what knowledge facilities and Large Tech’s push for extra AI means for his or her communities, jobs, property values, and future,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) wrote in a letter to Musk on Wednesday. “Electrical energy costs are skyrocketing, the electrical grid is strained, our clear air and water are being polluted, and noise is carrying on communities’ well being and endurance.”
Public opposition to knowledge facilities is rising within the U.S. after xAI’s buildout in Memphis, and with others underway from OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft and Google. Gallup discovered in a survey revealed in Might that seven in 10 Individuals oppose the development of an AI knowledge middle of their native space, with 48% strongly opposed.
Pallone has demanded details about Musk’s services by Aug. 11.
SpaceX did not reply to a request for remark.
SpaceXAI’s Colossus knowledge middle in Memphis, Tennessee on June 17, 2026.
Andrew Evers, CNBC
SpaceX’s synthetic intelligence services, often known as Colossus and Colossus 2, embrace three knowledge facilities full of cutting-edge Nvidia processors. They had been constructed by xAI, earlier than SpaceX acquired Musk’s startup, which is the developer of Grok’s AI fashions, chatbot and picture enhancing instruments.
The services are on the coronary heart of SpaceX’s AI ambitions, as the corporate tries to compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, and to finally construct orbital knowledge facilities.
Pallone excoriated SpaceX and Musk for a “disregard for the well being and well-being of native communities.” He mentioned the corporate has created “an enormous well being danger” to neighbors by “trucking in off-grid fuel generators” to energy the services, all with out the right permits and air pollution controls.
President Trump’s Division of Justice has filed a movement to intervene, and to successfully assist xAI battle off a lawsuit, which was filed by environmental advocates and the NAACP in Mississippi to cease the corporate’s use of allegedly unlawful, air-polluting generators.
“The Trump Administration has basically claimed that it alone decides whether or not SpaceXAI and different firms get a free cross to pollute unimpeded,” Pallone wrote. “However simply because the Trump Administration will bend over backward to provide tech firms free rein over neighborhood air, water, and land doesn’t make your actions authorized.”
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, enacted laws earlier this month to make sure knowledge middle operators pay a justifiable share for electrical energy, as a substitute of shifting prices to residents and companies.
Learn the letter right here.
