AI data centers are plugging in retired jet engines to dodge grid waits

The wait for grid power has gotten so brutal that AI data centers are yanking jet engines out of retirement and burning natural gas to make their own electricity, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The rebuilt aircraft engines aren't meant to be permanent power plants — they're a shortcut. And the whole point is speed: Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen told the Times that with jet-powered units, operators can have a data center running in 24 months. For contrast, pulling 100 megawatts off the grid in Northern Virginia takes roughly seven years, according to the International Energy Agency.

Elon Musk's xAI is already on board. The company installed eight converted jet-engine turbines in Mississippi to help feed its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, per state permits and satellite imagery cited by the Times. The units come from ProEnergy, which rebuilds a GE engine commonly found on Boeing jets. OpenAI followed Musk's lead in 2025, firing up gas turbines at its first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas.

Crusoe, the Denver startup building that Abilene campus, ordered 13 of ProEnergy's converted units in April. It isn't married to them, though — in September Crusoe walked away from a $1.25 billion deal to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic, the startup building a supersonic passenger jet that also sells a power-plant version of that engine. A Crusoe spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that turbines are still in the plan.

The grid logjam is already costing operators real business. Last month, Microsoft pulled out as the anchor customer for Nscale's data center in Loughton, England, after the local utility said it couldn't deliver enough power until the early-to-mid 2030s. Most new power capacity isn't expected to come online until 2031, a Mitsubishi Power executive told Bloomberg last week. The Trump administration is piling on, nudging data centers to generate their own electricity.

There's a catch. Converted jet engines are less efficient and dirtier than turbines built for conventional gas plants, and it takes more of them to produce the same amount of power, according to the Times. That could turn them into a short-term fix — some experts expect efficiency and environmental concerns to move up the priority list within a year or two.