xAI Offers Southaven Cash for Houses and a Signed Promise Not to Sue

Letters have reached Southaven, Mississippi mailboxes: MZX Tech, the xAI subsidiary running the gas-turbine plant on Stanton Road, will buy your house if you sign a release voiding "any possible claims" against the plant, including the June class action over turbine noise↗ ¹². The same letter insists MZX "denies all of the allegations" ¹. Residents who received offers say the prices track Zillow appraisal values ¹.

The letter that buys the lawsuit

The release is the point of the purchase. Sellers sign an initial real estate contract, then a second agreement at closing voiding "any possible claims" against the plant, the class action included ¹. After signing, residents "will be unable to recover any damages" from the suit or "bring claims" on their own, the letter states ¹.

Each signed release removes one household from a class the suit counts above 10,000, ahead of the 29 October conference where a judge weighs certification↗ ¹³. The buyout list and the class roll draw on the same pool of neighbors, which puts residents on opposite sides of one price: take the appraisal, or keep the house and sue ¹³.

Ten thousand people inside the noise zone

Jason Haley, Preston Herrington and Taylor Logsdon sued xAI and MZX in June on behalf of more than 10,000 neighbors who describe squealing, rumbling, lost sleep and falling property values ¹. On 23 September, Memphis residents Robert Carter and Sabrina Anderson filed a second federal suit↗, calling the sound a continuous "jet engine" ². At least six similar noise cases against data centers↗ were filed this year, from Wisconsin to Texas ⁹.

The referees stepped aside

Mississippi regulators treat the trailer-mounted turbines as "mobile sources" outside air permitting; the count grew from 27 unpermitted units when the NAACP sued in April to 57 by mid-May and 69 by 31 July ⁶¹. A 30 July agreed order↗ lets them run into next year while 41 permitted stationary turbines wait on delayed parts ⁷.

The federal referee then switched sides. In June the Justice Department asked the court to dismiss the NAACP case↗, citing Grok's support for military strikes in Iran; the injunction hearing set for 24 August was postponed and never rescheduled ¹⁶.

The noise has a delivery schedule

Musk says Colossus 2, the Memphis-area cluster the NAACP suit says the Southaven plant powers, now runs 550,000 Nvidia chips, with 220,000 more due next week↗, 220,000 in November and possibly 220,000 in December, "if we get lucky" ⁴⁵⁶. That lands near 1.21 million chips, past the stated one-million-GPU goal for Memphis ⁴. In August, the Tennessee Valley Authority approved another 100 megawatts↗ for the complex ⁸.

Denial, plus a retirement schedule

MZX calls the offers voluntary, and recorded noise has peaked near 70 dB, below the National Institutes of Health's 85 dB threshold; other research ties lost sleep to sustained levels above 53 dB ³. The agreed order commits the company to a turbine retirement schedule ⁷. What no filing offers is a number for the houses, or relief for anyone who stays.

29 October in Oxford

The first conference in the class action arrives on 29 October, when a judge weighs whether the case proceeds as a class action ³. Two numbers tell the story from there: how many houses MZX buys before certification, and whether the December chips land. The cheapest noise abatement in America is a Zillow appraisal.