Elon Musk‘s artificial intelligence startup xAI has hired Katie Miller, wife of President Donald Trump‘s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, as a communications manager just as the company secured a controversial permit for its Memphis data center operations.
What Happened: The Shelby County Health Department on Wednesday approved xAI’s application to operate 15 natural gas-burning turbines at its Colossus supercomputer facility, despite months of community protests over air quality concerns.
The permit includes emissions limits and testing requirements, with penalties reaching $10,000 per day for non-compliance.
Katie Miller, a seasoned political operative who previously worked at the Department of Government Efficiency, announced the permit approval in a rare email to reporters from her xAI corporate address, reported Fortune. The communication marked an unusual departure for Musk’s companies, which disbanded media relations teams years ago and typically communicate only through social media.
“xAI welcomes today’s decision by the Shelby County Health Department,” Miller wrote. “Our onsite power generation will be equipped with state-of-the-art emissions control technology, making this facility the lowest emitting of its kind in the country.”
Why It Matters: Miller’s hiring comes amid growing tensions between Trump and Musk. She departed the White House in May to work full-time for Musk’s ventures, according to CNN, while her husband remains with the Trump administration. The relationship between the two billionaires has deteriorated, with Musk recently threatening to fund a rival political party.
The Memphis facility powers xAI’s Grok AI model and represents Musk’s direct challenge to OpenAI‘s ChatGPT and Alphabet Inc.‘s GOOGL GOOG Google Gemini. The company recently raised $10 billion in debt and equity, with discussions underway for an additional $20 billion equity round that could value xAI at over $120 billion.
The Memphis supercomputer utilizes primarily NVIDIA Corp. NVDA GPUs, with additional chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD. Musk plans to deploy 1 million GPUs at the facility, with acquisition costs estimated between $30 billion and $40 billion, according to analyst Gene Munster.
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