Elon Musk’s xAI warned a federal court that shutting down temporary gas turbines at its Stanton Road plant in Southaven, Mississippi, could cripple Grok and disrupt AI services used by hundreds of millions worldwide.
xAI Warns Shutdown Could Cripple Grok
"An abrupt loss of power from Stanton Road would inflict catastrophic harms on Defendants and hundreds of millions of users worldwide: Grok would largely cease to function, and other cutting-edge AI services would be significantly disrupted," xAI said in court papers cited in a Commercial Appeal report on Monday.
The NAACP and its Mississippi State Conference seek a preliminary injunction under the Clean Air Act against xAI and subsidiary MZX Tech LLC, alleging the companies operated mobile natural-gas turbines without required permits and pollution controls. The groups moved to halt the turbines in May, while xAI subsequently added more units.
DOJ Cites Grok’s National Security Role
The Justice Department intervened in June and asked the court to dismiss the suit. DOJ said the Southaven power supply supports AI models "critical to the economy and the Department of War" and argued that shutting it down could hinder military use of AI for national defense.
A Defense Department declaration called Grok’s continued availability "a matter of paramount national security." It said Grok is one of four proprietary state-of-the-art models capable of supporting "national security applications" and one of three suitable for "mission-critical operations across Secret and Top-Secret classified networks."
The filing said Grok supported U.S. military operations during Operation Epic Fury.
The environmental fight centers on temporary turbines powering xAI’s Colossus 2 data center, with the Southaven plant also expected to support additional planned facilities. The company agreed with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to start removing them as early as August and remove all by July 2027.
Permanent Power Plant Replaces Temporary Turbines
xAI said it is replacing the temporary fleet with a 1.2-gigawatt permanent plant containing 41 turbines authorized under a Clean Air Act permit granted in March. The company’s removal timetable stretches through next summer.
The preliminary-injunction hearing originally scheduled for Aug. 24 was postponed, according to the federal court docket.
The case highlights frontier AI’s enormous power demands, while xAI argues that interrupting one major energy source could affect both Grok’s consumer service and systems the federal government says support classified military work.
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