(Reuters) – Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, to house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), it said on Wednesday the city council, at a time when the company is trying to compete against rivals like OpenAI.
The measure represents a major expansion for the supercomputer called Colossus, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train the company’s chatbot, called Grok.
As part of the expansion, Nvidia, the supplier of the GPUs, Dell and Super Micro, which assembled the servers for the computer, will establish operations in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement.
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Colossus is a critical component of Musk’s growing investment in , as the billionaire ramps up his rivalry against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. Last month, Musk expanded his lawsuit against the creator of ChatGPT, .
The plan to expand xAI’s supercomputer by tenfold is likely to raise environmental concerns, as activists and lawmakers have noted a growing number of data centers for their vast energy consumption.
In August, the Southern Environmental Law Center asked local authorities in Tennessee to look into whether xAI was using gas turbines to help power its supercomputer without the necessary permits.
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(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Austin)
