What happened
The Next Web reports that Musk said SpaceX is adding two sites to Colossus 2, its AI computing complex in Memphis. He named them Gun Range and Spam. Data Center Dynamics reports that both sites are in Southaven, Mississippi, across the state border from Memphis, Tennessee. Musk made the announcement on X on Sunday, according to the report. He said the Spam site once housed Hormel products, while the Gun Range site was once owned by the local police department.
Musk said Gun Range was tracking to be operational by the end of November and Spam in December. Those are target dates stated by Musk, not confirmation that either site is already operating. He also said he had walked the entire Colossus 2 site around midnight and again in the morning, and credited the SpaceX team and contractors with making good progress. The article provides no capacity figures for the two sites, no count of chips or servers, and no detail about their power arrangements.
The expansion is intended to add computing power for Grok. The article says Musk built the first Colossus supercomputer in Memphis in 2024, and that xAI began work on Colossus 2 last year. xAI is now part of SpaceX. The report also says Musk said last week that SpaceX had raised $40 billion in debt to buy AI chips, and that its AI business overtook Starlink in revenue in the last quarter. Those statements provide context for the scale of the company’s AI ambitions, but the article does not connect the financing figure to the cost or capacity of these two particular sites.
The expansion sits amid local opposition and litigation. Residents near the campuses have packed public hearings, staged protests and created petitions, according to Business Insider as cited by The Next Web. In April, the NAACP sued xAI and subsidiary MZX Tech, alleging they operate unpermitted methane gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, to power Colossus 2. A US district judge last week rejected the companies’ bid to dismiss the case. The lawsuit continues; the article does not report a final finding on the allegations.
What the archive adds
This is a new fact on a known SpaceX-and-AI story. A Field Note on SpaceX and Tesla exploring a merger argued that corporate strategy matters for AI when it advances into verifiable integration. The Memphis site update adds a specific infrastructure expansion, but does not establish how it integrates with Tesla or a broader combined operation.
Trend signal
The update is consistent with agent economics moving to completed work only in the broad sense that AI services depend on sufficient compute. It provides no utilization, cost-per-task, or completed-work figures, so it does not demonstrate a change in the economics of agent systems. The signal here is capacity investment, not measured efficiency.
Why now
Musk supplied near-term target dates—Gun Range by the end of November and Spam in December—making the update operationally concrete. The timing also coincides with an active legal challenge over turbines that the NAACP says power Colossus 2. The source does not explain whether the lawsuit altered the construction or commissioning schedule.
Why it matters
For teams building AI products, this is a reminder that model capability and product demand are only part of the deployment equation. Compute campuses require sites, power, contractors, financing, and permission to operate. If a project’s power source is contested or its permits are challenged, its advertised capacity can be less certain than a company’s infrastructure announcements suggest.
The report does not provide enough detail to estimate how much additional capacity these sites will deliver or whether it will change Grok’s availability, latency, or pricing. Builders should therefore treat this as a signal about SpaceX’s infrastructure build-out—not as evidence of an imminent change to an API or model they can use. The continuing case also illustrates why infrastructure risk belongs in vendor assessment alongside benchmarks and service terms.
Limits and uncertainty
The announcement is attributed to Musk and reported by The Next Web; the article gives no independent confirmation that construction is complete or that either site will meet the stated dates. It supplies no site-level capacity, chip inventory, power draw, cost, or expected service impact. The $40 billion debt figure is reported as a separate statement about buying AI chips, not as a budget for these facilities. The turbine allegations are claims in an ongoing lawsuit, not adjudicated facts; the source reports only that the motion to dismiss was rejected.
Reader takeaway
Colossus 2 is set to grow with two additional Memphis-area sites, but the announcement is about planned infrastructure, not newly available developer capacity. Track whether the sites actually open on schedule and how the turbine litigation develops before drawing conclusions about compute supply or operational risk.
Open question
Will the two new sites meet Musk’s stated target dates while the turbine lawsuit continues?