MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – Anthropic, the parent company of Claude AI, is moving into Memphis, Mayor Paul Young announced Wednesday.
Anthropic will take over Colossus 1, located on Lowery Road near the Boxtown neighborhood.
Colossus was built by xAI, which is owned by Elon Musk, in 2024 to power its AI service Grok. The investment in the site of a former Electrolux plant cost “between $30 and 40 billion.”
xAI has since moved operations to Colossus 2 in Southwest Memphis.
Anthropic’s data center operation is a part of a partnership with SpaceX, another Musk-led company, to use the compute capacity at the Colossus 1 data center.
The facility will give Claude access to more than 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month, which will increase capacity for Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers.
Anthropic will be the sole tenant of Colossus 1.
“The company describes itself as a Public Benefit Corporation with a single purpose: the responsible development of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity, with accountability to the public good embedded in its corporate DNA,” Young said in a statement.
Young said Anthropic has shown an interest in being “a great neighbor for Memphis, not just a tenant.”
Abre’ Conner, NAACP Director of Environmental and Climate Justice, issued this statement to Action News 5 following the announcement:
“Any company that disregards the obvious environmental and health concerns of Black communities to supposedly power a future that will help us all is sending a clear message about who it intends to serve in that future. Black and other frontline communities have demanded not to be treated as sacrifice zones for a digital future that perpetuates the harms of the past. Anthropic’s use of a data center that pollutes a historically Black community is, at best, an uninformed decision, and at worst, a total disregard for the community’s wishes and health. As we have done since xAI forced its way into Memphis, we will continue to stand with the communities most impacted by these decisions.”
Earlier in the day, the NAACP asked for a court-ordered stop to xAI’s use of gas-powered turbines at its plant in Southaven, Mississippi, until a decision is released in their newly filed lawsuit.
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