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Once upon a time, an immigrant named Elon Musk came to the US with a burning desire to do good, and he did right well. After making a small fortune at PayPal, he bought a startup called Tesla Motors and a defunct manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, then proceeded to shock the world by making compelling electric cars at a time when EVs were generally thought of as glorified golf carts. Then he shocked the world again by building a new production facility in the desert outside of Reno, Nevada, which he rather grandly called a Gigafactory.
Longtime Musk watchers will recall how Elon bragged that his new factory would be powered by solar panels on the roof and wind turbines in the surrounding hills. He made it a point to tell anyone who would listen that the Gigafactory would not even have a connection to a methane distribution system!
A Change Occurs
Turn the clock ahead 15 years and you will find Musk is the proud owner of a mammoth data center in Memphis, Tennessee, that has expanded across state lines into northern Mississippi. It is the place where most of the computing power for xAI is located, and the combined campuses have a voracious appetite for electricity. The local utilities cannot provide enough electrons themselves, so Elon is relying on several dozen portable methane-fired generators.
