Elon Musk’s startup xAI has already begun training A.I. models at its new supercomputing center in Memphis, Tenn., according to the billionaire. Plans for the facility, which will use thousands of Nvidia (NVDA) graphics processing units (GPUs) to train new versions of xAI’s chatbot Grok, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, were initially announced in June.
“Nice work by the xAI team, X team, Nvidia and supporting companies getting Memphis Supercluster training started at 4:20 a.m. local time,” wrote Musk yesterday (July 22) in an X post.
Its Memphis supercomputing center is a key aspect of xAI’s plans to gain on other generative A.I. companies, which are also pouring billions into developing data centers across the country to boost the development and training of their A.I. models. xAI was able to get training underway at its center in 19 days after beginning installation, according to Musk, who claimed this is “the fastest that anyone has ever gotten a supercomputer to train.”
The municipal utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) told Observer that xAI’s training in Memphis is currently taking place in an existing substation with utility connections. While the building can accommodate 8 megawatts of power for now, MLGW will upgrade the substation to expand its capacity to 50 megawatts by August 1. Musk’s company also plans to construct another substation by 2025 with 150 megawatts of capacity, which local environmental groups say is enough energy to power 100,000 homes. xAI’s expansion plans will require approval from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). “As of now, we don’t have an agreement in place with xAI,” TVA told Observer in a statement, adding that it is “working with our partners at MLGW on details of the proposal and electricity needs.”
xAI launched in 2023 and raised $6 billion in a venture funding round earlier this year, which valued the company at $24 billion. However, compared to rivals like OpenAI and Microsoft (MSFT), the startup is still several years behind in the A.I. race. “We have a lot of catching up to do relative to companies that have been around for five or 10 or 20 years,” said Musk yesterday during an interview with the Canadian author Jordan Peterson.
Grok is available to subscribers of X premium and X premium+. Its successor, Grok 2, has already been trained on 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs and will hopefully be released in August as a model that is “on par or close to” OpenAI’s newest release, GnPT-4, Musk told Peterson.
Grok 3, meanwhile, is being trained by 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs at xAI’s Memphis supercomputing center over the next three to four months, Musk said, with plans to release the model in December. At that time, “Grok 3 should be the most powerful A.I. in the world,” he claimed.
Come help xAI route photons as a elite fiber tech in Memphis! pic.twitter.com/JJShV75May
— xAI (@xai) July 15, 2024
xAI’s team is growing rapidly
As xAI gears up for a rapid timeline of A.I. model releases, it is also aggressively expanding. The company is “definitely looking to increase our human talent advantage,” wrote Musk, who hired much of his founding team from OpenAI, Google (GOOGL) and DeepMind, in a post on X.
The company is hiring for 29 open roles as of today (July 23). Nine of these are based out of Memphis and primarily relate to security, management and troubleshooting positions. The two Memphis-based roles displaying pay ranges consist of security lead jobs and offer salaries of $110,000 to $140,000 and $100,000 to $150,000. xAI, which currently has 97 employees, is also hiring across the Bay Area and London for positions that include A.I. engineers and researchers, product designers and A.I. coding tutors.
how june started & how it’s going
come 🧑🍳 with us at xAI & 𝕏 if you like building & running the biggest computers in the world!https://t.co/E9BY2xFmcLhttps://t.co/NU05SX5tVb pic.twitter.com/qFMpJcizw2
— xAI (@xai) July 2, 2024