Elon Musk wants xAI to build the world's most powerful supercomputer using Nvidia chips
Elon Musk is building a supercomputer that he wants running by fall 2025, The Information reported.
The "gigafactory of compute" will use Nvidia GPUs and aims to surpass Meta's big cluster of chips.
xAI has raised another $6 billion and Musk invested $750 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Elon Musk has big AI ambitions.
The billionaire wants to build a supercomputer and have it running by fall 2025, The Information reported.
xAI announced Sunday that it raised $6 billion in a fresh funding round, showing that the AI hype isn't dying down. Musk personally invested $750 million in xAI, and X contributed computing power worth $250 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Musk now wants the compute resources to boost operations at the startup. After the latest funding round xAI has a $24 billion valuation despite only releasing a chatbot called Grok, which Musk says has "a little humor."
According to The Information's report, a cluster of Nvidia's H100 GPUs will power what Musk dubbed a "gigafactory of compute."
Nvidia's expensive and coveted GPUs are essential for AI firms to train their large language models, and it takes a big cluster of them to do so. Musk needs a cluster to compete in the AI race — and he reportedly told investors that xAI's would be more than four times as large as Meta's.
On Nvidia's earnings call last week, CFO Colette Kress said xAI is buying the new Blackwell chip due for delivery later this year.
xAI already rents servers with around 16,000 Nvidia chips from Oracle. It could partner with the company cofounded by Musk's friend Larry Ellison to build the supercomputer and splash out $10 billion to rent its cloud servers in the coming years, The Information reported.
The xAI chief's goals are ambitious given the $100 billion Stargate supercomputer Microsoft and OpenAI are building is not expected to start operating until 2028.
xAI is hiring for several roles in San Francisco and London as it seeks to expand and catch up with its rivals. Musk wrote on X on Monday: "Join xAI if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe, which requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness."
xAI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
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