Elon Musk unveils plan to launch supercomputer

Elon Musk recently revealed that his AI startup, xAI, has grand plans to construct a supercomputer to enhance its AI chatbot, Grok. Musk aims to have this computational powerhouse operational by fall 2025, potentially collaborating with Oracle to bring this vision to life.

Founded by Musk last year, xAI aims to challenge AI titans like Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google's Alphabet. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has been vocal about his ambition to rival these giants. Earlier this year, Musk mentioned that training the Grok 2 model utilised around 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, and future versions like Grok 3 will require a staggering 100,000 of these chips.

Elon Musk has outlined plans for a "gigafactory of compute" to support xAI's ambitions. This supercomputer, integrating 100,000 Nvidia chips, is reportedly set to be up and running by fall 2025. Musk has assured investors of his commitment to meeting this deadline.

This cutting-edge supercomputer will feature Nvidia's flagship H100 GPUs, with the final setup being four times larger than the biggest existing GPU clusters today, according to Musk’s presentation to investors in May. Due to high demand, these potent GPUs are a hot commodity in the data centre chip market for AI.

This supercomputer is projected to be "at least four times the size of the largest GPU clusters currently in existence", such as those used by Meta for AI model training. Musk’s endeavour underscores his intent to compete with AI powerhouses like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and other startups including Anthropic and Stability AI.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and departed in 2018, has criticised the company’s pivot towards profitability under CEO Sam Altman. Earlier this year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing it of straying from its original non-profit mission to make AI research widely accessible. OpenAI has dismissed the lawsuit, attributing Musk's actions to dissatisfaction following his departure.

In November 2023, Elon Musk entered the AI arena with the launch of Grok, positioned as a competitor to popular generative AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. Musk announced that Grok would be accessible to all X Premium+ subscribers once it exits early beta. Additionally, the Tesla CEO disclosed that Grok has access to all user posts on X, the platform he controversially acquired in October 2022.

Grok’s real-time understanding of the world through the 𝕏 platform is its unique advantage, according to xAI.

"xAI’s Grok system is designed to have a little humour in its responses. Grok has real-time access to info via the 𝕏 platform, which is a massive advantage over other models. It’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way," Musk posted on X.