Home Elon Musk’s xAI launch the world’s ‘most powerful’ AI cluster, Colossus

Elon Musk’s xAI launch the world’s ‘most powerful’ AI cluster, Colossus

TLDR

  • xAI has launched Colossus, claimed to be the world's most powerful AI training cluster.
  • Colossus features 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs and plans to double its size soon.
  • The AI cluster aims to boost xAI's Grok in competing with OpenAI and Google.

Elon Musk’s xAI has claimed to have launched the world’s ‘most powerful’ AI cluster, Colossus, with plans to increase its size even more.

The tech CEO and billionaire announced the launch of the Colossus 100k H100 training cluster in a post on X (Sep. 2). Musk applauded the “excellent work by the [xAI] team, Nvidia and our many partners/suppliers”

“This weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online,” he wrote. “From start to finish, it was done in 122 days. Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months.”

Colossus boasts a massive 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, which is a huge amount compared to other competitors. For example, ChatGPT uses an estimated 30,000 A100 GPUs. xAI’s Colossus was built in just 122 days and there are reportedly plans for it to double in size down the line.

This cutting-edge system is housed in a facility in Memphis, Tennessee, formerly owned by Electrolux. According to earlier reports by The Information, Musk envisions transforming this location into a massive “gigafactory of compute.”

The Nvidia GPUs used for Colossus are among the most coveted technology products today. Their soaring demand has propelled Nvidia’s market capitalization and enabled it to briefly become the world’s most valuable company. Acquiring these GPUs can be difficult, as all the major players in the market want the same chips. To navigate this issue, xAI managed to bypass the competition by obtaining the initial batch of GPUs that were first allocated to Tesla, Musk revealed on X in June.

 

How could Colossus affect the wider AI sector?

The massive amount of GPUs certainly goes some way towards verifying Musk’s claim that Colossus is the ‘most powerful AI training system in the world.’ It’s another competitor entering the already crowded generative AI space and could help xAI’s Grok strengthen its position as a serious contender in the AI space. AI’s Grok 2 is already nipping at the heels of OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Grok 2 was only trained on roughly 15,000 GPUs, so the performance increase with Colossus’ 100,000 GPUs is sure to be sizeable, being six times more powerful. The xAI team and future versions of Grok will therefore likely be able to put renewed pressure on OpenAI, Google, and others in the generative AI space to deliver new results.

Featured image: Midjourney

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Rachael Davies
Tech Journalist

Rachael Davies has spent six years reporting on tech and entertainment, writing for publications like the Evening Standard, Huffington Post, Dazed, and more. From niche topics like the latest gaming mods to consumer-faced guides on the latest tech, she puts her MA in Convergent Journalism to work, following avenues guided by a variety of interests. As well as writing, she also has experience in editing as the UK Editor of The Mary Sue , as well as speaking on the important of SEO in journalism at the Student Press Association National Conference. You can find her full portfolio over on…

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