The New York Times reported Tuesday that some AI data centers that have been lining up for grid connections and new turbines for years are converting jet engines to generate their own electricity.
This engine was salvaged from a retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, so no one had any idea it would be a permanent power plant. But they’re another sign of how far the power supply lags behind AI growth.
For companies stuck on these lines, the main appeal of modified jet engines is how quickly they can get up and running. “It’s all about delivering power as quickly as possible,” Rystad Energy analyst Ordan Martinsen told the Times. With jet-powered units, “you can have a data center up and running in 24 months,” he said.
Meanwhile, it would take Northern Virginia about seven years to connect 100 megawatts of power to the grid, according to the International Energy Agency. An executive at Mitsubishi Power, one of the world’s top power generation equipment makers, told Bloomberg last week that most of the power capacity is expected to be operational by 2031.
In some cases, these delays are already costing some data center operators business. Last month, Microsoft pulled out as a major customer for Nscale’s data center in Loughton, England, after the local power company said it would not be able to provide enough power until the early to mid-2030s.
Elon Musk’s xAI is one company already using the engine, installing eight turbines converted from jet engines in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, the Times reported, citing state permits and satellite imagery. The unit is made by ProEnergy, a rebuilt GE engine commonly found in Boeing jets.
In 2025, OpenAI followed Musk’s lead and deployed gas turbines at Stargate’s first facility in Abilene, Texas. Crusoe, a Denver-based startup building AI data centers, is building its Abilene campus and ordered 13 ProEnergy retrofit units in April.
In September, Crusoe canceled a $1.25 billion contract to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic. Boom Supersonic is a startup developing supersonic airliners and has begun selling the jet’s engines as power plants for data centers. A Crusoe spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that the company plans to continue using the turbines.
Now, the Trump administration is ramping up the pressure by encouraging data centers to generate their own electricity.
But modified jet engines come with tradeoffs. The Times says they are less efficient and polluting than turbines designed for traditional gas plants, and require more engines to produce the same amount of power. So in the end, retrofitted jet engines may be short-lived, with some experts saying efficiency and environmental concerns could become more important in a year or two.
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