Winners and Losers: It appears that Elon Musk’s company, recently renamed SpaceXSI, has found a way to discourage residents from joining a class-action noise pollution lawsuit against its data centers: they buy out their homes on the condition that they don’t sue.
Real estate agents have gone door-to-door on behalf of the tech giant in the Colonial Hills neighborhood of Southaven, Mississippi, offering to buy residents’ homes if they don’t join the ongoing lawsuit, The Guardian writes.
A real estate agent told a resident that 418 homes were planned to be purchased and that 18 homeowners had already agreed to sell. The real estate agent and the local mayor say the houses will house SpaceXSI employees.
In January, the EPA closed a loophole that xAI had relied on by treating off-grid turbines like temporary “non-road engines.” Federal regulators made it clear that such turbines must meet the same Clean Air Act requirements as stationary power plants. However, gas turbines continue to be used at the Colossus 1 and 2 sites without the necessary air pollution permits in place. The EPA has said that enforcing permit requirements is up to the state.
SpaceXSI has since promised to remove all unauthorized turbines in a year, but noise pollution continues to anger residents.
“It sounds like an airplane engine, but it’s continuous and incredibly loud,” Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher who lives about two miles from the site, told The Guardian. “I was woken up by it at 2 a.m., I was woken up by it at 3 a.m. Sometimes I just need to get away from it because it makes me so angry.”
— SemiAnalysis (@SemiAnalysis_) September 17, 2025
“There’s a high-pitched hum and then another sound like an airplane over your house. It was so distressing that I can’t sleep; I just leave the house or turn on music until I fall asleep completely exhausted,” said Jason Haley, one of the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It drives you crazy. Plus, you lose hope because you’re ignored or dismissed. There’s no escape.”
The homes are offered for sale at market value – the average home price in the area is $180,000. Musk himself spends up to four nights a week in an Airstream trailer in the Memphis area as he personally oversees construction.
A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in June over near-constant noise, vibration and other nuisance damage from the facilities.
SpaceXSI disputes the claims, saying it has adjusted its power output and installed soundproof walls to reduce the impact on the neighborhood.
Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite said city monitors had not recorded noise levels above the local limit of 70 decibels, although some experts warn that sustained noise of even 50 decibels can be harmful to health.
Musselwhite added that the acquisitions would not turn Colonial Hills into a company town. “The acquisition serves several purposes, namely to provide housing for some employees and a goodwill gesture of a good corporate citizen to those who find industrial development in their area negative,” he said.
This is not the first time SpaceXSI has tried to appeal to local residents. The company tried to offer locals a 50% discount on its Starlink satellite internet service earlier this year, but only about 2,000 of 250,000 people signed up.
