xAI will buy your house near its turbines. You just have to drop the lawsuit

Jason Haley lives near a power plant that didn't exist a couple of years ago. "It's been so torturous I can't sleep," he told The Guardian. His neighbors in Southaven, Mississippi, describe the sound in their lawsuit as a "steady mix of high-pitched squealing, roaring, low rumbling and humming."

The plant sits on a former Duke Energy site and runs dozens of temporary gas turbines (69 as of July 31, according to the Mississippi Free Press). It feeds data centers in Southaven and across the state line in Memphis that belong to xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, which is now part of SpaceX. The operator on paper is a subsidiary called MZX Tech.

This month MZX Tech started buying the neighborhood.

The offer

Letters to residents, first published by the Mississippi Free Press in September, say the company will buy homes through a local broker, Burch Realty Group. The deal is described as "fully voluntary." There's no price in the letter; the Free Press reported offers are pegged to Zillow estimates, and The Guardian puts the local average at about $180,000.

The catch is the paperwork. Sellers sign a release of all claims tied to the noise lawsuit and give up the right to bring their own. The letter says MZX "denies all of the allegations against it" but "also requires property for its business purposes."

County records cited by The Guardian show MZX has closed on five homes since October 9. The Verge also counted five. A realtor told one resident the target is 418 homes in the Colonial Hills neighborhood and that 18 owners have already agreed. xAI hasn't confirmed either number.

The lawsuit it shrinks

Haley and two other residents, Preston Herrington and Taylor Logsdon, sued in June in federal court for the Northern District of Mississippi. They allege "near-constant noise, vibrations and other nuisance-level harms," and say it has cost them sleep, health and property value. They want to represent everyone who has lived near the plant since August 2025, which the complaint puts at more than 10,000 people. A first conference on whether the case can go forward as a class action was set for October 29 in Oxford.

Look at how those two facts fit together. A class action gets its leverage from size. Every house MZX buys removes a household from the class, removes a potential witness from the street, and turns a complainant into a former resident with a signed release. If the company reaches anything like 418, the neighbors who are left to complain will be living next to a lot of company-owned houses.

Southaven's mayor, Darren Musselwhite, sees it differently. He backs the buyout and told The Guardian it is "a goodwill gesture from a good corporate citizen." He has said the homes could house xAI employees and rejected the idea that this makes Southaven a company town. He also says city monitors haven't recorded noise above the local 70-decibel limit.

That number cuts both ways. Readings cited in the lawsuit reached about 70 decibels. That's under the 85-decibel level federal health officials tie to hearing damage, but the suit's complaint is about sleep, and 70 decibels outside a bedroom window at 3 a.m. is a very different thing from 70 decibels at a busy intersection at noon.

The rest of the legal pile

xAI denies the noise claims. It says it has varied the plant's output and built sound-dampening walls. In July it agreed with state regulators to replace the temporary turbines with a permanent gas-fired plant by next summer. The plaintiffs have dropped SpaceX from the case, and xAI and MZX have moved to dismiss part of it.

The noise suit is not the company's only problem in the area:

• The NAACP, represented by Earthjustice, is suing under the Clean Air Act, arguing the turbines ran without the permits they needed. On October 19 federal judge Debra Brown turned down a Justice Department attempt to end that case. The ruling didn't decide whether the pollution claims are true.
• Mississippi regulators could fine the company up to $6.1 million for building three data centers before it had stormwater permits, according to DataCenterDynamics, citing a SpaceX filing. The company is discussing a settlement.

DeSoto County News, which covered the letters in September, gave its readers the plainest advice anyone has offered here: talk to a lawyer before you sign, because the release ends your claim for good.

xAI built walls to keep the sound in. It turns out the cheaper noise barrier is a deed.

Sources: The Guardian, The Next Web, DeSoto County News.