Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, is making waves in the tech world with its ambitious plan to build its own supercomputer. The project, aimed at running the next iteration of xAI’s chatbot Grok, is set to launch as early as next year, according to a recent investor presentation.
Musk has revealed that the supercomputer will require up to 100,000 specialized semiconductors to train and run Grok, necessitating a “gigafactory of compute” to house the chips. The device will be powered by Nvidia’s flagship H100 GPUs and will be at least four times the size of the largest GPU clusters currently in operation.
The news of xAI’s supercomputer project comes on the heels of reports that the company has secured new funding, bringing its valuation close to $6 billion. Musk has expressed confidence that xAI can compete with industry giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google by leveraging data, technology, and business resources from his other ventures, including Twitter/X, Tesla, and Starlink.
xAI made headlines last year with the debut of Grok, a ChatGPT-like AI assistant boasting an impressive 314 billion parameters. In a move towards democratizing AI technology, xAI announced in March that it would open-source Grok, potentially leading to innovation in commercial applications.
Industry experts believe that open-source AI models could drive competition, lower costs, and foster quicker innovation compared to proprietary models developed by big tech firms. With Musk’s ambitious plans for xAI, including turning it into a payments superapp and unveiling Tesla’s robotaxi, the tech world eagerly awaits the next big breakthrough from the visionary entrepreneur.