Elon Musk’s X faces global outage after Oregon data centre fire

Billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X recently experienced a significant global outage linked to a fire at its leased data centre in Hillsboro, Oregon. The outage disrupted service for thousands of users worldwide, with many reporting slowdowns and connectivity issues.

On Friday, X’s official engineering account acknowledged the problem, stating, “X is aware some of our users are experiencing performance issues on the platform today. We are experiencing a data center outage, and the team is actively working to remediate the issue.” The company assured users that efforts were underway to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

According to reports from Wired, the fire originated in a battery room inside the data centre. Piseth Pich, spokesperson for Hillsboro Fire and Rescue, confirmed that while the blaze was contained to the battery room, smoke filled the area. Importantly, the fire did not spread to other parts of the building, and no injuries were reported. All staff members were safely evacuated. Digital Realty, the company linked to the data centre space rented by Musk’s X, said, “The incident is under control, and the fire department has concluded its on-site response.” They added that they were “prioritizing the safety of our personnel, the integrity of the facility, and minimizing customer impact.”

The Hillsboro data centre is one of several locations leased by X for hosting its services. Before Musk acquired the platform, X operated through data centres in Portland, Sacramento, California, and Atlanta, Georgia. The Sacramento facility is owned by Prime, and the Atlanta location is owned by QTS. The Hillsboro centre is connected to Digital Realty, a major real estate investment trust that specializes in data centres.

The outage became evident on May 23 when over 6,000 users worldwide reported disruptions on Downdetector.com. On Saturday, NetBlocks, a global internet watchdog, confirmed that the outage persisted for some international users, marking the second time within a week that X faced widespread service interruptions. NetBlocks clarified that these issues were not related to internet filtering or country-level disruptions, emphasizing that the root cause was tied to the technical difficulties at the data centre.

This outage underscores the critical importance of data centre infrastructure in maintaining seamless access to digital platforms like X. As users eagerly await a full resolution, Musk’s team continues to monitor the situation closely and work toward restoring normal service.