'Sold us to the richest man': Elon Musk is being accused of destroying lives in Memphis, here's why

Life is unfair and problematic, especially if you are not the richest man in the world. But if you are, you can pick a residential neighbourhood in Memphis and turn it into a chemical blasting area with just a wad of cash.

Something similar to this is being done by billionaire Elon Musk, who recently became the first person in the world with a $600 billion fortune. While the 54-year-old may love calling out others on his social media platform X (Formerly Twitter), he surely hides his own deeds quite well. Mainly in a neighbourhood filled with families who have stopped opening their windows because breathing has now become hard.

Memphis residents speak out against Elon Musk

In a conversation with Time, some residents in Memphis shared how they have been struggling for clean air since Elon Musk's AI company began pumping out plumes of pollution to power a data centre in the area.

“It’s God's given air, and man shouldn’t take it away from us,” Easter Knox, a 76-year-old woman who lives in Boxtown, just three miles from the xAI data centre, told the outlet. Knox was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in 2024 and has lost three loved ones to cancer. She began to smell gas in the air last year and no longer opens her windows due to the "rotten cabbage" odour.

“Imagine the outcry if these facilities had been placed next to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, no one would allow it,” said Austin Dalgo, an academic primary care physician in South Memphis. “Instead, they were placed in the backyard of a historically Black, underserved neighbourhood, reinforcing a long legacy of environmental racism in Memphis—and our country,” they added.

Where is Elon Musk's data centre located?

The data centre being talked about is located in Boxtown, a neighbourhood in Southwest Memphis. It has a historically majority Black population with a median household income of $36,000, as per Time and Politico.

The area has 17 industrial facilities and for generations, people have battled pollution-related health issues. The air quality was deemed unhealthy due to the smog even before the construction of the world's richest man's supercomputer began, as per Politico. Now, the creation of the data centre has only increased the residents' problems.

On xAI's website, the supercomputer is dubbed Colossus, the "world's biggest." It has a whopping output of 200k GPUs and helps power the company's notoriously famous chatbot, Grok.

The degrading life in Memphis

In order to power the data centre, the company made use of gas turbines, as per the reports. These were meant to be temporary solutions as proper infrastructure was built to support Colossus, but now the residents fear this has set a precedent for other AI data centres, reported the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

“Why can’t we breathe at home?” said 28-year-old Alexis Humphrey to Time. Humphrey has her first major asthma attack in 15 years, not long after Colossus was built. State representative Justin Pearson also made a statement at a protest earlier this year, "They put our lungs and our air on the auction block and sold us to the richest man in the world."

A fight for breath

In June, the NAACP filed an intent-to-sue notice to xAI, claiming the company was violating the Clean Air Act, though a lawsuit has not been filed yet. Politico previously reported that none of the turbines had pollution controls that are mandated by federal law or a permit until this summer and by that time they had been working for six months already.

In a statement shared with the Memphis Commercial Appeal in July, xAI said that it followed all laws, adding that all temporary turbines had been decommissioned and only 15 permitted turbines were in use. On Monday, Dec. 15, an appeal to revoke xAI's air permit was dismissed following a seven-hour hearing involving community members, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The bigger concern

After the Trump administration shut down the Environmental Protection Agency's scientific research team, concerns have been raised over data centres owned by major companies expanding rapidly. People have raised concerns over high electricity costs, while those in other states are worried about the water quality.

Thus, Musk's data centre is a consistent risk to the health and well-being of the residents of the neighbourhood and considering he is planning to expand to other locations, it seems the concern is only going to rise.