Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has announced plans to expand the scale of its Colossus supercomputer tenfold, aiming to increase the existing 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) to over one million. This facility, located in Memphis, Tennessee, is considered the largest AI supercomputer in the world, having been built in just three months. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised the speed of its construction, noting that such data centers typically take three years to complete.
The expansion plan is expected to require hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, considering that modern Nvidia GPUs can cost tens of thousands of dollars each. Earlier this year, xAI raised $11 billion in funding, with a valuation of up to $45 billion, and recently the company secured an additional $5 billion in funding support. The Memphis Chamber of Commerce also revealed that Nvidia, Dell, and Supermicro will establish new offices in the area, and a dedicated "xAI Task Force" will provide round-the-clock support services.
However, the expansion plans have raised some concerns, with critics pointing out that the rapid construction did not receive sufficient permits and expressing worries about the burden on the local power grid. xAI manager Brent Mayo responded at an event, stating that the company has utilized Tesla's Megapack technology to ensure grid stability and that the project can "move forward at an unparalleled speed."
Additionally, xAI plans to train an updated version of the Grok chatbot on Colossus to further enhance its AI capabilities. Although Grok is currently only available through the X platform and has not yet reached the level of competitors like OpenAI or Anthropic, Musk's company intends to launch a standalone xAI application to compete directly with AI applications like ChatGPT. This marks a direct competitive relationship between Musk and OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015.
Recently, Musk has filed a lawsuit regarding the company's decision to transition from a non-profit to a for-profit organization, following a dispute with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The expansion and technological advancements of xAI undoubtedly elevate Musk's competitive stance in the field of artificial intelligence to new heights.