Tennessee Data Center Watchlist
Tennessee's data-center story is now an AI-compute and electricity story. Memphis is scaling faster than a conventional colocation market, while Gallatin, Clarksville, TVA and local governments are all being pulled into the same debate over generation, transmission, permitting and who pays for the buildout.
Public power figures for the largest AI campuses vary by source and project phase. When a number is a planning maximum, approximate figure or disputed operating estimate, it stays out of the structured capacity field and is described with its qualifier instead.
xAI / SpaceXAI Colossus 1
Colossus operates from a converted million-square-foot industrial facility in Memphis. xAI says the cluster contains more than 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs and has a roadmap toward one million GPUs. Public power figures vary by source, with Tennessee legislative analysis around 280 MW and Anthropic describing more than 300 MW of available compute capacity, so the structured capacity field stays intentionally null.
- Operator
- xAI / SpaceXAI
What to watch
- GPU and electrical expansion
- air-quality permits for on-site generation
- MLGW and TVA power delivery
- water use and Boxtown-area community impacts
xAI / SpaceXAI second Memphis campus
Tennessee legislative analysis describes a second planned xAI facility with potential electrical demand as high as 1,563 MW. Because that is a planning-scale upper figure rather than commissioned capacity, this tracker leaves capacity null until phased buildout is documented.
- Operator
- xAI / SpaceXAI
What to watch
- site and phase approvals
- TVA interconnection capacity
- generation and transmission additions
- local permitting and community review
Meta Gallatin data center
Meta operates a large Gallatin data center. Tennessee legislative materials place its electrical scale at roughly 300 MW, so this tracker treats that number as contextual rather than a precise structured capacity value.
- Operator
- Meta
What to watch
- future campus expansion
- Sumner County power infrastructure
- water and cooling demand
- permanent workforce and contractor activity
Google Clarksville data center
Google has operated its Clarksville / Montgomery County data center since 2019. The campus is now part of a broader TVA strategy that includes demand response and an advanced-nuclear agreement with Kairos Power as data-center electricity demand grows across Tennessee and Alabama.
- Operator
What to watch
- campus expansion
- TVA demand-response participation
- Kairos Power project milestones
- Montgomery County workforce demand
TVA data-center load growth
Data-center demand is now a major Tennessee Valley planning issue. ThinkTennessee reports that data-center electricity use across the valley grew sevenfold from 2020 to 2025 to 8.3 million MWh, while TVA reportedly had roughly 11,000 MW of data-center connection requests in July 2025.
- Operator
- Tennessee Valley Authority
What to watch
- connection-queue conversion into real projects
- new generation and transmission
- rate impacts on households and existing industry
- large-load service timelines
Tennessee data-center infrastructure cost law
A Tennessee law enacted in 2026 generally prevents municipalities or electric utilities from absorbing incremental electrical-infrastructure costs created by new data centers of 50 MW or more. Relevant provisions begin applying in 2027.
What to watch
- 2027 implementation
- 50 MW threshold interpretation
- utility contract structures
- cost allocation for transmission and generation
Nashville data-center policy review
Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell signed an executive order supporting a temporary large-data-center moratorium while Metro studies effects on air, water, public spaces, energy and neighborhoods. The local-control debate remains a major part of Tennessee's data-center policy landscape.
What to watch
- Metro study findings
- moratorium duration and scope
- future siting and zoning rules
- state-versus-local approval authority