SemiAnalysis: SpaceX turned a plant into a data center in 91 days, but its Memphis-area campus will keep under half its on-site power from July 2027

Concept illustration: on a long beige table sit two separate platforms; on the left one, a long brick-red building with ten chimneys, tagged TEMPORARY TURBINES, is joined by wavy pipes to a black glass-fronted building lettered SPACEX, with a SPACEX tag above it. On the right platform, from left to right, are a row of four pale flat panels and a smaller brick-red building with three chimneys, tagged PERMANENT PLANT, joined by wavy pipes to a second black building lettered SPACEX, while a SEMIANALYSIS tag at the top centre has a line running down to the gap between the two platforms. Printed on the image: 2.7→1.24 GW SemiAnalysis estimate of on-site generation.

SemiAnalysis, an analysis firm that tracks AI infrastructure, estimated on November 3 that on-site generation at SpaceX's Memphis-area campus will fall from 2.7 GW to 1.24 GW from July 2027, because an environmental agreement requires the campus's temporary turbines to be removed. Our inference: buyers planning to rent SpaceX compute in 2027 should judge the Memphis campus by its grid power and batteries, not by how fast SpaceX builds data halls.

SpaceX builds data centers faster than the rest of the industry. SemiAnalysis says a new data center typically takes 8 to 12 months to build, and SpaceX has cut that time in half. Converting existing buildings is faster still. Colossus 2, a converted plant in Southaven, Mississippi, on the southern edge of the Memphis metro area, reached 210 MW in 91 days. Colossus 1, the first site, took 122 days to reach 150 MW (SemiAnalysis, 2026-11-03). SpaceX has raised its own estimate of 2027 compute to about 13 GW, a total across all SpaceX sites, as relayed by SemiAnalysis.

On-site generation at the Colossus 2 campus has been shrinking since August. SpaceXAI, SpaceX's AI business, announced that it signed an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality on July 30. All 69 temporary gas turbines at the Southaven power plant start coming out in August 2026, with removal complete before July 2027. A permanent plant of about 1.2 GW with 41 fixed turbines, approved in March, replaces them (WLBT, 2026-07-31; WREG, 2026-07-30). SemiAnalysis calls the agreement legally binding. By its estimate, the site can legally run 2.7 GW of rated generating capacity today and only 1.24 GW from July 2027.

The grid covers only part of that gap. Citing records of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federal utility that supplies the region, SemiAnalysis says Macrohard and MiniHard, two data halls on the Colossus 2 campus, have applied for a combined 1.15 GW of grid power. The substation they would connect to is due to be finished on December 31. Even assuming all 1.15 GW is connected, SemiAnalysis estimates the site could still be more than 300 MW short. SemiAnalysis expects the shortfall can probably be covered. Its fix is nearly 6 GWh of batteries plus tiered power that cuts internal training first during a shortage to keep external services running.

Musk places the power bottleneck somewhere else. On the October 20 earnings call, Musk said SpaceX makes gas-turbine blades in the foundry it uses for rocket engines, which lets SpaceX connect power 12 to 18 months ahead of others. Those words come from a summary by Fireside Alpha, an account that posts earnings-call summaries, reposted by Groq executive Sunny Madra (Sunny Madra repost, 2026-10-20).

Not proven yet: only SemiAnalysis has estimated the rated capacity and the shortfall How we checked →

Next to watch: whether the substation is finished on December 31 and the 1.15 GW of grid power is connected, and whether the data hall code-named Project SPAM, in the middle of the Colossus 2 campus, comes online in December as targeted. Two things would overturn this reading. One is the Mississippi environmental agency extending the agreement before July 2027. The other is the campus, by July 2027, waiting on unfinished data halls rather than on power.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Nov 4, 2026, alongside 10 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "SemiAnalysis: SpaceX turned a plant into a data center in 91 days, but its Memphis-area campus will keep under half its on-site power from July 2027." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-11-04-1/. Accessed access date.