Elon Musk has acquired mobile natural gas generator developer APR Energy to help fuel his company’s data center expansion.. – Bret Hartman / TED. According to reporting by Electrek, the acquisition was made public only because of an early termination notice from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approving it without requiring further review.
Reports indicate that the tech mogul spent approximately $1 billion to acquire the Jacksonville, Florida-based firm, with the FTC filing completed in May of this year.. APR already has a firm foothold in the data center sector. Last February, the company partnered with Duos Technologies to deploy four mobile gas turbines with a combined capacity of 100MW for a major unnamed US hyperscaler.
It followed up in June 2025 by announcing that it had obtained approval from state regulators to proceed with developing an 800-acre data center in Pampa, Texas. It is unclear whether the Texas data center will go ahead. DCD has reached out for further information..
Elon Musk’s xAI has been in hot water over recent years due to its use of unpermitted gas turbines at its Colossus 1 and 2 data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, respectively.. xAI used a loophole in the Clean Air Act to operate as many as 35 turbines without a permit for a year at its Colossus 1 data center, but last year local regulators granted a permit to operate 15 turbines until 2027. The company subsequently deployed 19 turbines at its Colossus 2 data center earlier this year.
Reports suggest that the combined 19 turbines offer more than 500MW of capacity for the data center.. The company’s use of gas turbines in Memphis has been the subject of much controversy, with environmental and civil rights campaigners claiming that xAI installed the machines before the required permits were in place and that they are affecting air quality in one of the area’s poorest neighborhoods..
The company is currently facing a lawsuit from the SELC and other environmental non-profits over the deployment of the turbines.. More in North America. 09 Feb 2026.
13 Apr 2026. More in Behind-The-Meter. 20 Mar 2026.
30 Jan 2026. 22 Jun 2026
