Fire Breaks Out at a Data Center Leased by Elon Musk’s X

A occurrence broke retired Thursday greeting astatine a information halfway successful Hillsboro, Oregon, leased by Elon Musk’s X, forcing an extended consequence from emergency crews, according to aggregate sources who said to WIRED. The sources required anonymity arsenic they aren’t authorized to speak publically astir nan company.

Firefighters arrived astatine nan Hillsboro Technology Park, successful a suburb westbound of Portland, astatine 10:21 am, according to Hillsboro Fire and Rescue spokesperson Piseth Pich. They recovered a room pinch batteries that were deemed to beryllium progressive successful nan fire. Pich noted that nan occurrence had not dispersed to different parts of nan building, but said nan room successful mobility was dense pinch smoke. As of 3:00 pm, nan unit was still connected nan scene.

X did not instantly respond to a petition for remark from WIRED. It could not beryllium learned whether server operations astatine nan information halfway had been affected by nan incident.

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, nan institution had 3 information centers successful Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if 1 information halfway went down, postulation could beryllium shifted to nan different two—and divided truthful nary azygous information halfway was overwhelmed.

Around Christmas Eve 2022, Musk unopen down X’s information halfway successful Sacramento successful an effort to trim costs. The institution knowledgeable a awesome outage successful nan aftermath of nan shutdown. Over nan adjacent six months, nan institution moved much than 2,573 server racks from nan Sacramento installation to information centers successful Portland and Atlanta, according to soul documents.

In nan Portland area, X appears to lease abstraction from a building that has been linked to Digital Realty, 1 of nan world’s largest developers of information centers. Digital Realty provides varying levels of operating support astatine its sites, which tin person 1 aliases much tenants. It’s unclear if X shares this installation pinch different companies.

Ryan Young, vice president of Americas operations for Digital Realty, said successful a connection to WIRED connected Thursday evening that nan “fire-related incident astatine our PDX11 facility” had been contained and that nan occurrence section had left. “All unit were safely evacuated, pinch nary reported injuries,” Young stated. “We proceed to show nan situation, prioritizing nan information of our personnel, nan integrity of nan facility, and minimizing customer impact.”

Young declined to remark connected customers.

Batteries often usability arsenic a backup powerfulness root astatine information centers. But lithium-ion varieties tin beryllium volatile, and issues pinch upkeep and inadequate information measures have contributed to costly blazes astatine information centers astir nan world. Pich, nan Hillsboro Fire Department spokesperson, says he could not callback immoderate erstwhile occurrence involving batteries successful nan Oregon region’s galore different information centers.

X’s genitor company, xAI, has taken disapproval successful caller months for its accelerated description of powerfulness capacity astatine a caller information halfway successful Memphis, which opened past year. That facility, which Musk named Colossus, was built up astatine breakneck velocity to train xAI’s Grok and different AI tools. The institution installed much than 30 methane-powered state turbines, but because nan turbines are temporary, a national licence for contamination power isn't required, which appears to utilization a loophole successful nan Clean Air Act. The installation has drawn wide disapproval from surrounding Black and brownish communities, who are already exposed to a ample magnitude of aerial contamination and business emissions from different accommodation successful nan area.

Update 5/22/25 11:03 ET: This communicative has been updated to see further remark from Digital Realty.