Elon Musk raises $6 billion for xAI’s Memphis data center; will purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips to boost Tesla’s full self-driving capabilities
- Elon Musk is seeking $6 billion for xAI’s data center in Memphis
- Funding for the purchase of 100,000 Nvidia chips for AI projects
- The data center will support Tesla’s full self-driving capabilities
Elon Musk knows that staying competitive in the AI space requires deep pockets — in February 2024, the world’s richest man said Tesla would spend “over a billion dollars” on Nvidia’s H100 and AMD’s Instinct MI300 hardware, and added: “The stakes for being competitive in AI currently amount to at least several billion dollars per year.”
More recently, the controversial billionaire gave us a tour of the massive AI supercluster called Cortex used by X (formerly Twitter) and followed that up with news that Colossus, a new 100k H100 training cluster for Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, is get started now.
According to CNBC’s David FaberElon Musk has raised up to $6 billion (at a $50 billion valuation) to buy 100,000 Nvidia chips for xAI’s Memphis data center, which will power Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) capabilities, among other things.
Musk’s government role
Sources familiar with Musk’s plans told Faber that the $6 billion in funding will come from $5 billion in Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and $1 billion from other investors who will have the option to increase their investments.
Following Donald Trump’s election victory and the announcement that Elon Musk will lead the new Department of Government Efficiency within the president-elect’s administration, we can expect significant government changes regarding AI regulation.
Musk’s future role, despite potential conflicts of interest, is to “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excess regulation, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.”
However, no one believes for a second that this will be the limit of his involvement in broader policy decisions.
Like CNBC reports“Trump plans to revoke President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, according to his campaign platform, which states that it ‘stifles AI innovation and imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology,’ and that ‘instead Republicans support the development of AI, rooted in freedom of speech and human flourishing.’”
