xAI will buy 418 homes near its Mississippi data center if owners drop claims

MZX Tech, the xAI subsidiary that runs the gas plant on Stanton Road in Southaven, is offering to buy houses from residents who sign away the right to join the class action over its noise. A realtor going door to door told one resident the company plans to buy 418 homes, and that 18 owners had already made plans to sell. The offers cluster in Colonial Hills.

An owner who accepts signs two documents: a real estate contract and a separate release agreement that voids any possible claims connected to the plant. The letter names no price, and residents told the Mississippi Free Press the offers track Zillow estimates. MZX denies the allegations against it and says it needs property for its business purposes.

“Accepting a purchase offer and agreeing to the release agreement is fully voluntary”

— MZX Tech, in the letter sent to Southaven homeowners, https://www.mississippifreepress.org/xai-moves-to-buy-out-southaven-residents-who-agree-not-to-sue-it-over-power-plant-noise-letter-shows/

418 homes against a class of 10,000

Jason Haley, Preston Herrington and Taylor Logsdon filed the suit in June in federal court in Mississippi, and the complaint puts the affected area at more than 10,000 residents across Southaven and Horn Lake. Southaven households average about 2.6 people, so 418 homes hold roughly 1,090 of them. The company is offering to buy out around a tenth of the class, and 18 commitments is 4.3% of the way there.

The judge has not decided whether the case can proceed as a class action at all. The court set a conference on that question for 29 October in Oxford, so the buyouts have been running through the weeks before anyone defines who the class is.

Sixty-nine turbines and no permits

The plant ran 18 gas turbines last year, 47 by May and 69 by 31 July, according to state regulator documents. Mississippi lets portable turbines operate for a year without an air permit. The NAACP sued over that gap in April under the Clean Air Act. The Trump administration intervened on xAI's behalf in June, arguing the Southaven operation matters to national security, and a judge ruled against the federal bid to dismiss that case this month. The court postponed a preliminary injunction hearing set for 24 August and has not rescheduled it.

Readings cited in the noise complaint reach about 70 decibels, below the 85 the federal government ties to hearing damage. The plaintiffs claim nuisance, lost sleep and falling property values, and that gap explains why they stop short of claiming injury. They describe high-pitched squealing, engine roar and a low rumble that does not stop. The turbines power the xAI data center across the state line in Tennessee, where inference for Grok runs.

Southaven's mayor has backed the purchases, calling them good corporate citizenship and suggesting the houses could end up holding employees. Earlier this year he told a resident complaining about the noise to consider selling. xAI did not answer the Mississippi Free Press when it asked about the buyout letters. British officials held 137 meetings on datacentres without a single environmental group in the room, which is the same conversation held one layer up.

Informational material. The letter terms, the turbine counts and the decibel readings come from Mississippi Free Press and DeSoto County News reporting on the filings and state records; the 418 figure and the 18 commitments come from a realtor quoted by residents, not from the company. The household arithmetic and the share of the class are ours, and the court has not certified a class.