Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI Is Reportedly Seeking To Buy 418 Mississippi Homes Near Its Power Plant. There’s One Catch For Sellers.
SpaceXAI is offering to buy nearly 420 homes near its noisy Mississippi power plant, but sellers who accept quietly sign away something the offer never puts a price on.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI is offering to buy homes in Southaven, Mississippi, near the gas-turbine power plant that feeds its data centers, and sellers who accept must give up their claims in a pending noise class action against the company. The Guardian reports that the offers target 418 homes. The same reporting says at least 18 owners have agreed to sell. SpaceXAI has not confirmed those figures or explained what it plans for the neighborhood.
The buyer is MZX Tech LLC, a SpaceXAI subsidiary. xAI was renamed SpaceXAI in July 2026, after Musk’s AI and space companies merged into SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction). Mississippi Today calls the combined business a $2-trillion company.
One Signature, Two Assets Handed Over
Mississippi Today reported on Oct. 15 that residents had received a letter from Burch Realty Group, a local realtor working on behalf of MZX Tech. The letter offered to buy homes “in exchange for, among other things, a release of all claims” tied to the lawsuit. FOX13 Memphis also reported on this. The letter tells sellers: “After executing the Release Agreement, you will be unable to recover any damages or other relief from the Haley lawsuit.”
In the letter, MZX Tech “denies all of the allegations against it” and says it “requires property for business purposes,” without saying what those purposes are. The Mississippi Free Press reported that the offers are based on Zillow value estimates. The letter itself listed no prices.
Sellers have reason to treat this offer as an opening bid. A Zillow estimate puts a price on the house. Your legal claim goes out the door with the same signature, and the offer puts no price on it at all.
What Sellers Are Signing Away
Southaven residents Jason Haley, Preston Herrington and Taylor Logsdon sued in June 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Their complaint targets noise from the company’s temporary gas turbines and estimates that more than 10,000 people live in the affected area. The company denies the allegations. Attorney Robert Wiygul says anyone living in that area, renters included, is eligible.
The judge has not yet ruled on the proposed class boundaries, and a court conference on class certification is scheduled. Each signed release also shrinks the class, because every seller who signs is one fewer person the company would owe if the claims succeed.
The Mississippi Free Press reported that the site had 69 turbines as of July 31. County records show five purchases in the Colonial Hills neighborhood since Oct. 9, according to The Guardian via Superpower Daily.
A Mayor’s Pitch Meets a Renter’s Eviction Clock
Mayor Darren Musselwhite spoke about the buyout in an Oct. 1 blog post and at an Oct. 6 Board of Aldermen meeting. He called it good corporate citizenship and a “parallel approach” to cutting noise, and said the homes could house SpaceXAI employees. He also said the company has sped up plans to replace the temporary turbines with permanent, quieter ones. “Nobody is being forced to be bought out,” he said. “It’s totally voluntary.”
Mississippi Today spoke with Danielle Dillard, a 37-year-old renter who lives less than a mile from the plant. In late September, she found out that her landlord had taken the buyout. Mississippi Today reported that she was given 60 days to move out, one month after she had extended her lease. “It was never optional,” she said. She said neither her landlord nor SpaceXAI offered to pay her moving costs.
Asked about renters, the mayor said: “That’s nothing new. It has nothing to do with any development in Southaven.” Census estimates cited by Mississippi Today show renters living in one-third to two-thirds of the homes in the class-action neighborhoods.
Run These Four Checks Before Signing
- Price the home you would move into. Pull recent sales of comparable houses in the neighborhoods where you would actually buy. Add closing and moving costs. If the offer falls short of that total, it is below your real number. Wiygul put it this way: “For every individual, they have to look at whether a buyout is going to actually make them whole for what they’ve lost.”
- Confirm the tax treatment. Under federal law, you can exclude gain on a home you owned and lived in for 2 years out of the past 5. The cap is $250,000 for single filers and $500,000 for married couples filing jointly.
- Your claim matters. Put a value on it. Ask a lawyer who has no ties to the buyer to estimate what your share of the lawsuit could be worth. Add that figure to the house price, and compare the total with what MZX Tech is offering.
- Renters: read your lease. Lawyers told Mississippi Today that, in general, Mississippi law does not let a landlord end an active fixed-term lease early. The exceptions are a lease with an early termination clause or an agreement by both sides. Sam Buchanan Jr. of the Mississippi Center for Legal Services Corporation said tenants “can’t just automatically be kicked out at the landlord’s whim.” He recommends getting an independent opinion before you sign anything you don’t fully understand.
Bigger Fights Over the Same Turbines
The NAACP has filed a separate case against SpaceXAI over the same turbines under the Clean Air Act, and state and local officials say the company has not broken any state or local laws. The federal government has called its operations critical for national security.
The size of the AI build-out explains why the company wants this land. SpaceX’s AI unit brought in $7.6 billion of revenue in the third quarter, up 830%, and its compute capacity is expanding to 1.7 GW.
Shares traded near $144 Wednesday, down about 3% on the day.
Next comes the class certification conference. Until the judge sets the class boundaries, nobody knows how many residents’ claims are at stake, or what each one could be worth.
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AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
