Musk's xAI buys third building to expand AI compute power

Dec 30 (Reuters) - Elon Musk ⁠said on ⁠Tuesday ‍his artificial intelligence startup xAI has bought a third building to expand its infrastructure, aiming to ‍boost training capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts of ​compute power.

The latest expansion underscores xAI's ambitious push to compete more ​effectively with industry leaders OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude by training increasingly advanced models. The company's supercomputer cluster in Memphis, Tennessee, known as ​Colossus, is touted as the largest in the world.

"xAI has bought a third building called MACROHARDRR," Musk ​wrote on X, without disclosing its location. The term is potentially a play ‌on Microsoft's name.

The Information, which reported the development earlier in the day citing property records and ​a person familiar with the project, ⁠said the building for a third supersized data center is planned outside Memphis.

xAI is planning ‌to expand its supercomputer Colossus to house at least 1 million graphics processing units.

The startup is planning to start turning ‌the newly purchased warehouse into a data center in 2026, the Information ‌reported, adding that both the new data center and Colossus 2 are close to a natural gas power plant that xAI is ‍building in the area, as well as other power sources.

The expansion of AI infrastructure, however, ⁠has drawn criticism from environmental activists as data centers consume large amounts of energy.

xAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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