Elon Musk's AI company xAI plans to make the biggest investment by a new company in Memphis history. The company wants to build the world's most powerful supercomputer, called the "Gigafactory of Compute", in the former industrial city.
xAI aims to convert an old factory for this purpose. It would be the largest investment to date by a business entering the Memphis market, according to the press release.
The project still needs approval from the Memphis Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), the Tennessee Valley Authority and other government bodies.
Officials see the project as a big win that will "new era of growth and innovation for Memphis." The city says repurposing an old factory and its utilities is exactly the kind of economic development it wants for the city.
The company expects to create high-quality jobs after the first phase is completed, with the possibility of larger investments in later phases.
Details of the "Gigafactory of Compute" first came to light at the end of May as per The Information. It should be finished by fall 2025 and will be at least four times bigger than the strongest clusters now available from rivals like Meta.
Elon Musk has confirmed that he shipped Nvidia AI chips intended for Tesla to xAI, stating that Tesla wouldn't be able to use the chips at this point anyway. However, Elon Musk has also said that he doesn't want to get deeper into AI work with Tesla until he owns at least 25% of the company. This seems to be a conflict of interest between Musk's AI strategy and Tesla's shareholders.
Elon Musk promised that Grok 2, an AI model as good as GPT-4, would be released in May. But it's June now and we haven't heard anything about Grok 2. Grok 1.5, a giant AI model with okay performance, was released at the end of March 2024.