Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has announced a partnership with Dell, NVIDIA, and Supermicro to build what is claimed to be the world's largest supercomputer. This project will provide substantial computational resources to support the company's training efforts and reduce reliance on cloud services from Oracle and X Corp's data centers.

Supercomputer Data Center (2)

Image source note: The image was generated by AI, provided by the image licensing service Midjourney

The plan was announced in early June, with Dell CEO Michael Dell posting a photo of server racks on X (formerly Twitter), stating that his company is building one of the "AI factories" as part of the supercomputer infrastructure. Dell's AI factory concept offers specialized AI infrastructure services, utilizing liquid-cooled servers and NVIDIA's new Blackwell GPUs to support high-intensity AI workloads.

Elon Musk confirmed that Dell will assemble half of the supercomputer's racks, with the other half being handled by Supermicro. Musk confirmed Supermicro's involvement in a reply to another X user, simply writing "SMC" — Super Micro Computer. However, Supermicro has not confirmed the partnership with xAI.

Elon Musk recently revealed that xAI plans to purchase about 300,000 new Blackwell B200 GPUs from NVIDIA, but this will not occur until "next summer." Given the rapid development of AI hardware, Musk believes there is no need to invest in NVIDIA's current flagship product, the H100 GPU.

Additionally, xAI has recently raised $6 billion in funding, despite being only a year old with a valuation of $24 billion. The company has also been receiving shipments of NVIDIA chips previously reserved for Tesla. According to CNBC, 12,000 H100 GPUs intended for Tesla have been diverted to xAI. Musk stated during the company's first-quarter earnings call that Tesla will acquire about 85,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

Key Points:

⭐ xAI partners with Dell, NVIDIA, and Supermicro to build what is claimed to be the world's largest supercomputer, providing extensive computational resources to support its training efforts.

⭐ Dell's AI factory concept uses liquid-cooled servers and NVIDIA's new Blackwell GPUs to support high-intensity AI workloads, becoming part of the supercomputer infrastructure.

⭐ xAI plans to purchase about 300,000 new Blackwell B200 GPUs from NVIDIA, has raised $6 billion in funding, valued at $24 billion, and has been receiving shipments of NVIDIA chips previously reserved for Tesla.