Elon Musk's xAI Unveils 'Sustainable' Way To Cool Memphis Data Center Amid Criticism From Environmental Rights Groups

Elon Musk-led artificial intelligence company, xAI, unveiled new technology that will help the company "sustainably" cool its Memphis data center.

What Happened: Taking to social media platform X on Thursday, the company announced it was constructing "the world's largest ceramic membrane bioreactor (MBR) to sustainably supply 13 million gallons per day of cooling water to our Colossus Supercomputer."

A Membrane Bioreactor is a combination of technologies used in wastewater treatment by microfiltration or ultrafiltration with a biological wastewater treatment process in which biological organisms or enzymes are used to filter the water.

xAI says the cooling apparatus will use untreated wastewater from a nearby wastewater treatment plant to cool the Colossus Supercomputer facility.

Why It Matters: The announcement follows criticism of xAI by environmentalists and rights groups for its use of Gas-burning turbines to cool the data center, which critics say increases air pollution in Memphis and disproportionately affects Black-majority communities.

xAI also recently announced Grok for Government, after the company won over $200M worth of defense contracts from the Pentagon to scale the U.S. defense's AI capabilities.

Grok is also being offered on all Tesla Inc. TSLA vehicles in the U.S., with an Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s AMD Ryzen chipset powering the onboard vehicle computer.