Key facts
- xAI installed eight converted jet-engine turbines in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, the New York Times reported.
- Crusoe ordered 13 of ProEnergy's converted units in April 2026 for the Abilene, Texas campus it is building for OpenAI's Stargate site.
- Microsoft pulled out as anchor customer for Nscale's Loughton, England data center in October 2026 after the utility said power would not arrive until the early-to-mid 2030s.
- Crusoe walked away from a $1.25 billion deal for 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic in September 2026, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
- Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen said jet-powered units can have a data center running in 24 months.
Some AI data centers are turning to converted jet engines to generate their own electricity as they face years-long waits for grid connections and new turbines, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. The engines, pulled from retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, are not intended as permanent power plants, but they show how far power supply has fallen behind the AI buildout.
The main draw is speed. Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen told the Times that with jet-powered units a data center can be running in 24 months. Hooking up 100 megawatts to the grid in Northern Virginia takes about seven years, according to the International Energy Agency. Most power capacity is expected to come on by 2031, an executive at Mitsubishi Power told Bloomberg last week.
The delays are already costing some operators business. In October 2026, Microsoft pulled out as the anchor customer for Nscale's data center in Loughton, England, after the local utility said it could not deliver enough power until the early-to-mid 2030s.
Elon Musk's xAI is among the companies using the engines, having installed eight converted jet-engine turbines in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, the Times reported, citing state permits and satellite imagery. The units come from ProEnergy, which rebuilds a GE engine commonly found on Boeing jets. In 2025, OpenAI used gas turbines at its first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas. Crusoe, a Denver-based startup that builds AI data centers, is constructing that Abilene campus and ordered 13 of ProEnergy's converted units in April 2026.
In September 2026, Crusoe walked away from a $1.25 billion deal to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic, a startup developing a supersonic passenger jet that has also begun selling a version of that jet's engine as a power plant for data centers. A Crusoe spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that the company still plans to use turbines.
The Trump administration is adding to the pressure by encouraging data centers to generate their own electricity. Converted jet engines come with trade-offs: they are less efficient and pollute more than turbines designed for conventional gas plants, and it takes more of them to make the same amount of power, according to the Times. That may make them a short-term play, with some experts saying efficiency and environmental concerns may grow in importance in a year or two.