XAI Has New Information Heart With 12,000 GPUs and $700 Million in {Hardware}

• xAI plans to function a big information heart to assist X in Atlanta.
• The information heart may have about 12,000 GPUs and $700 million price of apparatus.
• xAI arrange an enormous information heart in Memphis final yr.

xAI has been quietly organising a knowledge heart in Atlanta, increasing its footprint past the large information heart in Memphis.

Elon Musk’s AI startup plans to function a big information heart with X. The 2 corporations are combining {hardware} to complete roughly 12,000 graphics processing items, the Nvidia-designed chips used for many AI computation, in line with a Enterprise Insider tally of the tools listed within the corporations’ settlement with Develop Fulton, one in all Atlanta’s financial growth businesses.

In December, X and xAI signed related agreements with Develop Fulton. Underneath the agreements, Develop Fulton orchestrated a municipal bond course of to finance the $700 million in chips, cables, and different tools going into the one facility. Fortune initially reported on the Atlanta information heart. The dimensions and scale of the info heart haven’t been beforehand reported.

Representatives for X and xAI didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Contained in the Fulton County information heart

The Atlanta information heart has sizable computing energy, in accordance to an information heart options architect, and knowledgeable in AI {hardware}, who requested to stay anonymous to touch upon the paperwork. It is comparable to an information heart a hyperscaler like Google or Amazon may arrange.

X representatives described it as an “exascale” information heart able to computing “trillion-parameter AI.” However the Georgia facility pales compared to the reported capability of xAI’s Memphis undertaking, nicknamed Colossus, which Musk has known as the biggest information heart on this planet.

The Georgia facility will home an estimated 12,448 Nvidia GPUs. The overwhelming majority of those are Hopper technology H100 GPUs, which price between $277,000 and $500,000 for every rack of eight chips, in line with the paperwork.

Roughly 3% of the chips are Nvidia’s less-powerful A100 GPUs, which price $147,000 for an equal configuration of eight chips. X is contributing all the A100s, together with 11,000 H100s.

Neither of those chip designs requires liquid cooling, which has been a degree of rigidity for Musk’s corporations in Memphis. When working at full capability, Colossus is predicted to change into among the many largest shoppers of water within the metropolis.

Along with H100 chips, xAI is contributing Mellanox switches and optics — high-bandwidth networking tools that may facilitate chips working collectively sooner, additionally bought from Nvidia. Paperwork submitted to Develop Fulton by X point out that the ability can be used to “develop and practice synthetic intelligence merchandise.”

Of the $700 million in accelerated computing {hardware} going into the ability, $442 million is allotted to X, and $258 million is allotted to xAI. The 2 corporations will obtain tax abatements which are estimated to be price about $10 million over the course of ten years, to be cut up in proportion with their {hardware} investments, in line with a consultant at Develop Fulton. Kwanza Corridor, chairman of the board at Develop Fulton, stated the group estimates the undertaking may have an general financial impression of greater than $241 million.

The information heart architect estimated the Atlanta facility would require 20 megawatts of complete energy, which it might realistically get from the ability grid. xAI has requested 150 megawatts from the Tennessee Valley Authority for the Memphis facility, a consultant for Memphis Mild, Fuel and Water stated throughout a metropolis council assembly in January.

X and xAI’s partnership

The Atlanta facility is an instance of Musk ostensibly pooling his sources to profit each X and xAI. Based on the data, X contributed 90% of the {hardware} for the info heart, and xAI 10%.

xAI launched its chatbot, Grok, on X’s platform in November 2023, however has since spun it off as an extra stand-alone app. On Monday, xAI launched the newest model of the chatbot, and Musk stated it has “greater than 10 occasions” the compute energy of its predecessor.

The tools can be used to coach massive language fashions and semantic search merchandise for the X platform, in line with the paperwork. X has about 16 staff within the space, based mostly on a evaluation of LinkedIn profiles. xAI has one employee stationed on the Georgia facility and two further staff listed as “X Corp Accomplice,” the corporate’s inner org chart reveals. The take care of Develop Fulton states that 24 jobs can be maintained on the facility and none can be added.

Musk is making an attempt to place xAI as a serious competitor to Huge Tech giants like OpenAI and Google, even drawing some expertise from Tesla. The corporate constructed its Memphis information heart in simply 122 days, in line with Nvidia — in document time for a knowledge heart of its dimension. xAI has additionally introduced in a whole bunch of information annotators to coach its chatbot over the previous yr with an eye fixed to hiring 1000’s within the months to return, BI beforehand reported.

In February, Musk and a gaggle of buyers submitted a $97.4 billion bid to purchase the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, however the billionaire later stated he would withdraw the bid if OpenAI stays a non-profit entity. In response to Musk’s preliminary supply, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed reporters that the corporate is “not on the market.”

“He clearly is a competitor,” Altman stated of the bid. “He is working arduous, and he is raised some huge cash for xAI and so they’re making an attempt to compete with us from a technological perspective, from getting the product into the market, and I want he would simply compete by constructing a greater product.”

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