Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI has pledged to expand its Colossus supercomputer tenfold to incorporate more than 1mn graphics processing units, in an effort to close the gap with rivals such as Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.
Colossus, built in just three months earlier this year, is believed to be the largest supercomputer in the world, operating a cluster of more than 100,000 interconnected Nvidia GPUs. The chips are used to train Musk’s chatbot Grok, which is less advanced and has fewer users than market-leader ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.
Work has already begun to increase the size of the facility in Memphis, Tennessee, according to a statement from the Greater Memphis Chamber on Wednesday. Nvidia, Dell and Supermicro Computer would also establish operations in Memphis to support the expansion, the chamber of commerce said, while it would establish an “xAI special operations team” to “provide round-the-clock concierge service to the company”.