It was revealed that Elon Musk has quietly acquired APR Energy, a Jacksonville-based company operating mobile gas and diesel turbines totaling over 1 Gigawatt (GW) of generation capacity.
The deal, valued at over $1 billion, surfaced through a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) early termination notice dated May 14 rather than any public announcement. This way, the acquisition gives Musk a captive supply of fast-deployable generation to power xAI’s Grok.
The APR Energy asset
APR Energy specializes in trailer-mounted gas turbines and reciprocating diesel engines that can reach full power in under 10 minutes and be installed in days rather than the years required for traditional power plants.
The company has already powered projects in over 35 countries, delivered more than 50 terawatt-hours of energy, and can stand up projects in as little as 15 to 30 days. Fortress Investment Group picked them up in late 2024 and then sold them to Musk.
The AI power crunch
In this context, xAI’s Colossus and Colossus 2 supercomputers in Memphis have been running on unpermitted gas turbines, with the Department of Justice (DoJ) intervening to keep them running on “national, economic, and energy security” grounds.
At the same time, environmental and civil rights groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Environmental Law Center, have sued under the Clean Air Act over the turbines, which could emit over 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Buying APR Energy gives Musk a vertically integrated power solution for his AI ambitions, even as a community is clearly affected and totally against these activities.
The sustainability contradiction: Clean energy champion turns fossil fuel operator
This move definitely shows a different side of Musk’s story. He spent years telling everyone that solar power was our only way out of the fossil fuel mess, even bringing SolarCity into Tesla to prove it. He even promised just a few months ago that Tesla and SpaceX would build a massive amount of solar manufacturing every year. But now that his own AI projects need juice, he’s skipped the green energy and gone straight for the quickest, dirtiest energy he could find.
The wildest part is that Tesla’s energy storage business is absolutely killing it; they deployed 46.7 GWh in 2025, and those margins are actually beating the car business. So, the tech to power his AI sustainably was right there in front of him. Instead, he went out and bought a fossil fuel company and is now pushing emissions into vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods. It’s a massive change of heart for the same guy who once called fossil fuels the “dumbest experiment in history.”
