TMTPOST -- Elon Musk on Tuesday suggested his artificial intelligence (AI) venture would continue its spending spree on chips.

Credit：Pixabay

Musk expected xAI would continue to buy graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia Corporation, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), and possibly other companies to train and run its AI-powered chatbot Grok, according to an interview with CNBC on Tuesday. “As long as Nvidia is better than what we make, we’ll keep buying from Nvidia,” Musk said.

Such purchase came as xAI is planning a 1 million GPU facility outside Memphis, where the AI startup has built a data center called Colossus, Tesla CEO said.

Musk cited his prediction a few years ago that the limitation on AI will be chips, though didn’t tell how many GPUs xAI has ordered and the timetable of the installation.

Musk in July last year touted opening of “the most powerful AI training cluster in the world” at xAI’s Memphis Supercluster. The facility housed 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs connecting with a single remote direct memory access, or RDMA, fabric. At the start of this month, the Greater Memphis Chamber announced the first phase of the facility reached full operational capacity with 200,000 GPUs.

Musk on Tuesday claimed Colossus is currently the most powerful training cluster in the world with “over 200,000 GPUs training coherently.”

It is unclear the planned xAI facility Musk mentioned is the reported second AI data center in Memphis.

XAI is said to look for a new data center as it plans to substantially increase adption of Nvidia chips, The Information reported in Febuary. xAI neared a deal with Dell Technologies to buy $5 billion worth of chip servers housing Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs, Blackwell GB200s, Bloomberg reported the same month.

Brent Mayo, an xAI manager working on Colossus, in March told the Daily Memphian that xAI purchased a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in the city, Tennessee. The new building could house 350,000 chips, the manager said, not specifying which king of chips.