Memphis Mayor Paul Young put this year’s data center taxes at “$54 million in taxes” and said “last year when they generated about $25 million in tax revenue, it was the second largest tax paying property in Shelby County”, in a media huddle clip carried live by ABC24 Memphis and posted on X on 9 and 10 November. He was answering a question about Elon Musk’s post that Memphis is booming because of data centers.
On 5 October, Action News 5 reported that Young said SpaceXAI, Musk’s AI company, “alone generated $54 million between the city and county this year”.
By our arithmetic, $54 million is 2.16 times $25 million. The pause still stands: the mayor’s office says the council’s 135-day moratorium on new data center approvals “does not shut down existing data centers”, and 135 days from the 20 October vote runs to 4 March 2027, by our arithmetic.
Business Pill · Who Pays for the Grid
A short explainer on who pays for grid upgrades for large loads such as data centers. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Memphis.
The key insight: Memphis Mayor Paul Young put this year’s data center taxes at $54 million in a media huddle clip carried live by ABC24 Memphis and posted on X on 9 and 10 November, and said last year’s figure was about $25 million. On 5 October, Action News 5 reported, he said SpaceXAI alone generated the $54 million between the city and county. By our arithmetic, that is 2.16 times last year’s figure.
The 85-second clip carries the ABC24 caption “MEMPHIS MAYOR PAUL YOUNG HOLDS MEDIA HUDDLE”. A reporter says Musk “recently tweeted that Memphis is quote unquote booming because of the data centers” and asks for the mayor’s thoughts. Young first said “we want to talk about it in a balanced way”, naming “the quality of life, noise, traffic” among residents’ concerns.
He then gave the two figures, and added: “I don’t know where $54 million puts it”. He tied the revenue to the guardrails: “That’s what this 90-day executive order has been about”. We transcribed the audio ourselves; the quotes match a typed transcript Fireside Alpha posted with the same clip on 9 November at 23:27 UTC.
Katie Miller’s post of the clip, at 01:23 UTC on 10 November, had about 951,000 views by our reading on 11 November. It quotes a 6 November post by Musk that reads “It’s true”.
Taxes generated by SpaceXAI (xAI) in Memphis and Shelby County as stated by Mayor Paul Young: about $25 million last year (ABC24 clip; CNBC, July) and $54 million this year, $25 million of it to the city (Local 24 News, 5 Oct). The 2.16x and the $29 million county share are our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
Memphis Mayor Paul Young confirming @elonmuskโs statement that Memphis is booming because of the data centers:
โThis year was $54 million in taxes generated. Last year about $25 million โ it was the second-largest taxpaying property in Shelby County.โ
Katie Miller posted the ABC24 media-huddle clip at 01:23 UTC on 10 November, quoting a 6 November Elon Musk post that reads “It’s true”. In the clip, Memphis Mayor Paul Young puts this year’s taxes at $54 million and last year’s at about $25 million; this piece quotes his words from our own transcript of the clip.
Where the $54 Million Comes From
The figure is not new to the clip. Local 24 News reported that at a Monday, Oct. 5, press availability Young said: “I think this year, [SpaceXAI will generate] $54 million between the City and County; $25 million is to the city”. The bracketed words are Local 24’s. Action News 5 quoted his comparison: “That’s the equivalent of 12,400 units of housing built in our city at $300,000 each”.
The $25 million appears twice, with two meanings. In October it was the city’s share of this year’s $54 million, which by our arithmetic leaves $29 million for the county. In the clip, it is last year’s total, which matches what CNBC reported in July: “During its first year in operation, SpaceXAI paid $25 million in taxes, making it the second largest tax-paying property in Shelby County after FedEx”, Young said.
What the Tax Records Show
The Daily Memphian reported in March that the company “paid $12,512,756.12 in 2025 property taxes Feb. 27”, according to the county trustee’s website, and that Shelby County government was projecting it “could pay almost $28 million in property taxes as its second Memphis data center comes onto the tax rolls”.
We also read the City of Memphis tax lookup for one account, P301698, whose listed owner is “XAI”, at 3231 Paul R Lowery Rd. It shows a personal-property city tax of $12,004,849.85 for 2025 and $8,536,146.76 for 2026, on assessments of $465.2 million and $330.8 million, a fall of 29% by our arithmetic. That is one account and the city levy only, so it neither confirms nor contradicts the mayor’s totals.
Where the Pause Stands
We reported on Memphis’s 135-day data center pause when the council passed it on 20 October, after a one-year moratorium failed 6-6, FOX13 reported. In a bulletin, Young says that during the pause the city “generally cannot accept new applications, approve new projects, or issue new data center permits”, and that “certain previously approved projects are exempt”.
The bulletin says the council’s action follows an executive order the mayor signed launching “a 90-day study to develop stronger protections for our neighborhoods, our air and water, our utility customers, and our city’s infrastructure”. It also says the planning division must propose zoning rules within 90 days. CBS News reported that SpaceXAI did not reply to a request for comment.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the clip adds no new number: the $54 million was on record from 5 October. What it adds is the year-on-year comparison in the mayor’s own words, and his line that he does not know where the new total ranks the company.
As we read the records we could open, the mayor’s totals and the public ledgers measure different things: the Daily Memphian cites a $12.5 million county trustee payment for 2025, and one city account fell 29% in 2026, by our arithmetic, so the $54 million cannot be rebuilt from either alone.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young, ABC24 media huddle clip, posted on X 9-10 November 2026
“I don’t know where $54 million puts it”
Three Implications
FOR MEMPHIS Young says 25% of the taxes go back to the community most adjacent to data centers, Action News 5 reported on 5 October.
FOR SPACEXAI The mayor’s bulletin says the 135-day pause does not shut down existing data centers and that certain previously approved projects are exempt.
FOR THE TIMELINE By our arithmetic, 135 days from the 20 October vote runs to 4 March 2027; the bulletin says the planning division must propose zoning rules within 90 days.
The framework argues: “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”
As we read it, Memphis shows the local ledger of that bottleneck: the mayor’s bulletin pairs the tax base with a TVA rate structure that, it says, requires data centers to pay higher electricity rates, and with a 90-day study of power, air and water. The framework predates this story and does not discuss Memphis.
What Is Not Established
The clip does not show the date of the huddle, and in it the mayor does not name the company, the tax types or the period behind “this year”; the company link comes from his 5 October remarks as Local 24 and Action News 5 reported them. Our transcript is machine-made from the clip’s audio. We did not contact the city, the county or SpaceXAI for this piece, and the documents we read do not reconcile the mayor’s totals with the trustee and city records.
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Memphis Mayor Paul Young puts this year’s data center taxes at $54 million, a figure he tied to SpaceXAI on 5 October, 2.16 times last year’s roughly $25 million by our arithmetic, and said he does not know where that ranks the company among Shelby County taxpayers. The 135-day pause on new data center approvals, which by our arithmetic runs to 4 March 2027, does not shut down existing data centers.
A note on sourcing. We transcribed the ABC24 media-huddle clip ourselves from the copy Katie Miller posted on X and checked it against Fireside Alpha’s typed transcript of the same clip. The 5 October remarks are as Local 24 News and Action News 5 reported them; the first-year figure is CNBC’s report; the trustee payment and county projection are the Daily Memphian’s. We read the City of Memphis tax record for account P301698 and the mayor’s bulletin on the pause directly. Ratios, shares and dates are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
