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Musk's xAI Is Building a Supercomputer to Power the Next Generation of Grok

The computer will reportedly require tens of thousands of Nvidia H100 GPUs to operate and cost billions to build.

 & Emily Price Weekend Reporter

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Elon Musk’s xAI is reportedly building a supercomputer that could power the next generation of its ChatGPT competition, Grok.

According to The Information, Musk has referred to the computer as a “gigafactory of compute” and told investors that the computer will require tens of thousands of Nvidia H100 GPUs to operate and cost billions to build.

During his presentation to investors, Musk also suggested the supercomputer would be four times larger than anything currently used by Grok’s competitors.

Musk established xAI roughly a year ago in response to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Though Musk helped launch OpenAI in 2015 alongside current CEO Sam Altman, he cut ties with the company in 2018 "to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX."

Musk has argued that ChatGPT isn’t safe for mainstream public use due to its potential to spout lies and alleged propaganda, though Grok has been caught spinning up fake stories of its own. Plus, Grok is partially trained on data from X/Twitter, which also has misinformation problems.

On April 12, xAI debuted Grok 1.5-Vision, which can interpret "documents, science diagrams, charts, screenshots, and photographs.”

About Our Expert

Emily Price

Emily Price

Weekend Reporter

Emily is a freelance writer based in Durham, NC. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Popular Mechanics, Macworld, Engadget, Computerworld, and more. You can also snag a copy of her book Productivity Hacks: 500+ Easy Ways to Accomplish More at Work--That Actually Work! online through Simon & Schuster or wherever books are sold.

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