SpaceX commits to spending over $2.8 billion on gas turbines to power AI data centers

SpaceX revealed in a regulatory filing that it has committed to spending over $2.8 billion in recent months to buy gas turbines for data centers supporting its xAI unit, which develops Grok. In March, SpaceX agreed to buy $805 million worth of turbines through 2029; in late April, it struck a deal for $2 billion worth of mobile gas turbines and related items (still pending).

Portable gas turbines are generators that run without drawing power from the grid and can be operated without a clean air permit for a year. SpaceX operates two data centers—Colossus 1 in Memphis, Tennessee, and Colossus 2 in Southaven, Mississippi—and has added 19 new portable turbines to Colossus 2 over the past two months, bringing the total to 46 units.

As of March, SpaceX had enough servers across both data centers to use about 1 gigawatt of power. The company expects to keep growing and has more than $14 billion in construction in progress, including data center equipment not yet operational. SpaceX is leasing server access at the Colossus data centers to Anthropic for $15 billion annually and plans to sign additional deals.