Elon Musk’s xAI accused of worsening Memphis smog with unauthorized gas turbines at data center
Elon Musk announced his new company xAI which he says has the goal to understand the true nature of the universe.
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is being accused by environmental and health advocates of adding to the pollution problem in Memphis, Tennessee, by using natural gas burning turbines at its new data center, and doing so without a permit.
The company said it was opening the data center in June in a former Electrolux factory, shortly after announcing it had raised $6 billion at a $24 billion valuation. In a post on X last month, Musk boasted that xAI had begun training its AI models at the facility using 100,000 of Nvidia’s H100 processors.
The Southern Environmental Law Center sent a letter this week to the Health Department in Shelby County, where Memphis is located, and to a regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of several local groups, asking regulators to investigate xAI for its unpermitted use of the turbines and the pollution they create.
The letter notes that xAI “has installed at least 18 gas combustion turbines over the last several months (with more potentially on the way).”
The company has been using the turbines to power the facility, but its long-term plan is to use power from the local utility, Memphis Light, Gas and Water and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
MLGW told CNBC that it started providing 50 megawatts of power to xAI at the beginning of August. However, the xAI facility requires an additional 100 megawatts. The utility has installed more circuit breakers, and started making improvements to transmission lines in the area to prepare for the added power consumption by xAI, as well.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of social media company X, started xAI in 2023 to develop large language models and AI products that aim to compete with those from Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. The company’s initial product is a chatbot called Grok, billed as a politically incorrect alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. AI models generally require massive amounts of power for data training and processing.
“This plant requires an enormous amount of electricity,” the advocates wrote in the letter.
Some of the 18 turbines are visible from the road around the property and, according to the advocates’ letter, emit air pollutants called nitrogen oxides (NOx) that add to a longstanding smog problem in the area. Shelby County has been given an “F” grade by the American Lung Association for its smog.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, even low levels of nitrogen oxides in the air can irritate a person’s eyes, nose, throat and lungs, causing them to cough, experience shortness of breath, tiredness and nausea. Breathing high levels of nitrogen oxides can cause “rapid burning, spasms, and swelling of tissues in the throat and upper respiratory tract,” and other serious health problems, the agency says.
Businesses in Tennessee are typically required to obtain permits to operate the types of turbines used by xAI. The permits would establish the allowable concentration of emissions, and determine efficiency requirements for the engines.
‘Significant health and environmental impact’
A permit would also mandate air quality testing to make sure users aren’t polluting more than they had planned to in the area due to issues like poor engine maintenance.
“The overarching concern remains that there has been very little transparency and opportunity for public input for the xAI project,” Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney with the Tennessee office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, told CNBC. The added concern, she said, is that it’s “already having significant health and environmental impact on the surrounding community.”
The groups wrote in the letter that the xAI turbines already in place have the capacity to emit an estimated 130 tons of nitrogen oxides annually, which would rank them as the ninth-largest source of the pollutants in the county. Their combined capacity could power around 50,000 homes.
Musk-led companies have a history of building facilities or operating high-emissions equipment without obtaining permits first.
CNBC reported earlier this month that SpaceX operated a water deluge and cooling system at its launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, repeatedly discharging industrial wastewater there without a permit, a violation of the Clean Water Act.
Musk’s tunneling venture, The Boring Co., was also fined by Texas environmental regulators for a similar issue — discharging wastewater into the Colorado River in Bastrop, Texas, without applying for permits or installing appropriate pollution controls.
Tesla was cited by a California air pollution regulator in 2021 for installing and modifying paint shop equipment that emitted hazardous air pollutants, without a permit and reviews as required by the Clean Air Act.
The EPA regional office covering Memphis didn’t respond to a request for comment. Nor did xAI.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Federal Reserve’s Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 22, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
OpenAI is detailing its plans to address ChatGPT’s shortcomings when handling “sensitive situations”
following a lawsuit from a family who blamed the chatbot for their teenage son’s death by suicide.
“We will keep improving, guided by experts and grounded in responsibility to the people who use our tools — and we hope others will join us in helping make sure this technology protects people at their most vulnerable,” OpenAI wrote on Tuesday, in a blog post titled, “Helping people when they need it most.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the parents of Adam Raine filed a product liability and wrongful death suit against OpenAI after their son died by suicide at age 16, NBC News reported. In the lawsuit, the family said that “ChatGPT actively helped Adam explore suicide methods.”
The company did not mention the Raine family or lawsuit in its blog post.
OpenAI said that although ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek help when expressing suicidal intent, the chatbot tends to offer answers that go against the company’s safeguards after many messages over an extended period of time.
The company said it’s also working on an update to its GPT-5 model released earlier this month that will cause the chatbot to deescalate conversations, and that it’s exploring how to “connect people to certified therapists before they are in an acute crisis,” including possibly building a network of licensed professionals that users could reach directly through ChatGPT.
Additionally, OpenAI said it’s looking into how to connect users with “those closest to them,” like friends and family members.
When it comes to teens, OpenAI said it will soon introduce controls that will give parents options to gain more insight into how their children use ChatGPT.
Jay Edelson, lead counsel for the Raine family, told CNBC on Tuesday that nobody from OpenAI has reached out to the family directly to offer condolences or discuss any effort to improve the safety of the company’s products.
“If you’re going to use the most powerful consumer tech on the planet — you have to trust that the founders have a moral compass,” Edelson said. “That’s the question for OpenAI right now, how can anyone trust them?”
Raine’s story isn’t isolated.
Writer Laura Reiley earlier this month published an essay in The New York Times detailing how her 29-year-old daughter died by suicide after discussing the idea extensively with ChatGPT. And in a case in Florida, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III died by suicide last year after discussing it with an AI chatbot on the app Character.AI.
As AI services grow in popularity, a host of concerns are arising around their use for therapy, companionship and other emotional needs.
But regulating the industry may also prove challenging.
On Monday, a coalition of AI companies, venture capitalists and executives, including OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman announced Leading the Future, a political operation that “will oppose policies that stifle innovation” when it comes to AI.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.
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Okta CEO Todd McKinnon appears on CNBC in September 2018.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
Okta shares rose 4% in extended trading on Tuesday after the identity software maker reported fiscal results that exceeded Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: 91 cents adjusted vs. 84 cents expected
- Revenue: $728 million vs. $711.8 million expected
Okta’s revenue grew about 13% year over year in the fiscal second quarter, which ended on July 31, according to a statement. Net income of $67 million, or 37 cents per share, was up from $29 million, or 15 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
In May, Okta adjusted its guidance to reflect macroeconomic uncertainty. But business has been going well, said Todd McKinnon, Okta’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
“It was much better than we thought,” McKinnon said. “Yeah, the results speak for themselves.”
U.S. government customers are being more careful about signing up for deals after President Donald Trump launched the Department of Government Efficiency in January.
“But even under that additional review, we did really well,” McKinnon said.
Net retention rate, a metric to show growth with existing customers, came to 106% in the quarter, unchanged from three months ago.
Companies will need to buy software to manage the identities of artificial intelligence agents working in their environments, which should lead to expansions with customers, McKinnon said. Selling suites of several kinds of Okta software should also boost revenue growth, he said.
Management called for 74 cents to 75 cents in adjusted earnings per share and $728 million to $730 million in revenue for the fiscal third quarter. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected earnings of 75 cents per share, with $722.9 million in revenue. Okta expects $2.260 billion to $2.265 billion in current remaining performance obligation, a measurement of subscription backlog to be recognized in the next 12 months, just above StreetAccount’s $2.26 billion consensus.
The company bumped up its fiscal 2026 forecast. It sees $3.33 to $3.38 in full-year adjusted earnings per share, with $2.875 billion to $2.885 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus showed $3.28 in adjusted earnings per share on $2.86 billion in revenue. Okta’s full fiscal year guidance from May included $3.23 to $3.28 per share and $2.850 billion to $2.860 in revenue.
Late last month, Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity company that announced an expanded partnership with Okta in July, announced plans to acquire Okta rival CyberArk for about $25 billion.
“Palo Alto is going to be like, ‘You have to buy security from us, and your endpoint from us and your SIEM [security information and event management] from us and your network from us,’ ” McKinnon said. “We just think that’s wrong, because customers need choice. It’s very unlikely they’re going to get every piece of technology or every piece of security from one vendor.”
A Palo Alto spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier on Tuesday, Okta said it had agreed to acquire Israeli startup Axiom Security, which sells software for managing data access. The companies did not disclose terms of the deal.
As of Tuesday’s close, Okta shares were up 16%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq was up 11%.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
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