SpaceX, Elon Musk’s behemoth company that launches rockets and runs data centers, is set to go public Friday with a target valuation above $1.75 trillion. The move will make Musk, already the richest man in the world, vastly wealthier.

A public offering will allow SpaceX to raise even more money to fund its AI ambitions, including building more data centers, faster.

But even as Musk and other SpaceX investors see a huge windfall, the community hosting xAI data centers already in operation are demanding accountability from the company’s use of polluting gas turbines and a water treatment facility put on pause earlier this year.

“We’re the extracted and exploited colony of what is going to be one of the most highly valued entities in the world,” says Justin Pearson, who represents portions of Memphis in the Tennessee House of Representatives. “People are going to die because of this pollution.”

xAI is selling $15 billion per year in compute at its Memphis campuses to Anthropic, another company planning a blockbuster IPO in the coming months. “People don’t matter to SpaceX, or Anthropic, or whoever is building these data centers,” Pearson says.

President Donald Trump has suggested the US government could take a financial stake in frontier AI companies in order to begin "giving back" to the American public. But it’s unclear what form that would take—or if such a move would even happen.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment and Anthropic declined to comment, though its head of public policy and Memphis’ mayor have