Elon Musk‘s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, has revealed plans to expand its Colossus supercomputer by over tenfold. This move is aimed at closing the gap with competitors such as Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
What Happened: The Colossus supercomputer, which was constructed in just three months, is set to incorporate more than 1 million graphics processing units (GPUs), reported the Financial Times on Wednesday. The supercomputer, which is currently the largest in the world, operates a cluster of over 100,000 interconnected Nvidia GPUs.
The expansion process has already commenced at the Memphis facility, with companies like Nvidia, Dell, and Supermicro Computer establishing operations in Memphis to support the expansion. The Greater Memphis Chamber also plans to create an “xAI special operations team” to provide round-the-clock service to the company.
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Why It Matters: AI companies are currently in a race to secure GPUs and access to data centers to meet the computing power demands for training and running their large-language models.
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has a nearly $14 billion partnership with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), which includes computing power credits. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, has received an $8 billion investment from Amazon and is set to gain access to a new cluster of over 100,000 specialized AI chips.
The AI industry is witnessing fierce competition for computing power, with major players like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), OpenAI, and Anthropic making significant moves to strengthen their positions.
On Tuesday, Jeff Bezos-backed Amazon unveiled advanced AI chip clusters to boost the performance of its partner, Anthropic, challenging the dominance of current market leaders, Nvidia and OpenAI. This move by xAI to expand its supercomputer is another significant development in this ongoing battle for AI supremacy.
Despite being a relatively new player in the AI industry, xAI, which is valued at $45 billion, has been rapidly gaining ground. The company, founded by Musk just over a year ago, has reportedly recently raised an additional $5 billion and is now in direct competition with OpenAI, a company Musk helped co-found in 2015.
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