Elon Musk's monster awakens as xAI turns 'Colossus,' the Nvidia-powered AI training supercomputer claiming that it is the most powerful computer in the world

Rome wasn't made in a single day, as they say. Elon Musk only needed 122 of them to build what he claims is the world's most powerful AI training system. The billionaire misanthrope of the world is not one to hang around.

Musk's new toy - dubbed Colossus - was built by his new AI company, xAI. It has been designed to train the newest version of the GROK (GROK-3) language model. It's powered not less than 100,000 Nvidia GPUs.

If that's still not enough, Musk said in an X-post that Colossus would double in power in "a few months" with the addition of another 50,000 Nvidia H200 chips, each of which packs roughly twice the AI accelerator performance of an H100 chip.

It's unclear how much all of this costs Musk and xAI. Nvidia H100 GPUs are priced anywhere between $20,000 and $90,000. Musk must have gotten a good deal by buying 100,000 units at once.

Even at the lower estimate you're looking $2 billion for Nvidia chips in phase one. Not to mention the cost of building the datacenter and all the necessary infrastructure, hiring staff, and setting up advanced LLM training. Oh, and the cost of those other 50,000 H200 as a light frosting.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that xAI released GROK-2 exclusively for X subscribers. GROK-2, poor AI, apparently had to make do with a measly 15,000 H100 chip for training. GROK-2 is ranked second in the LLM league table, only behind ChatGPT-4o.

So, even in the first phase, it will be six-seven times more powerful than GROK-2. Then, a few months down the road, it is said to double its power. Musk is clearly aiming to build the most powerful LLM.

Musk told Jordan Peterson, a conservative polemicist who is now a podcaster, that he hoped GROK-3 could be launched by December.

A machine of this kind is not without its collateral consequences. The new cluster in Memphis, Tennessee will consume 150 megawatts and use up to 1 million gallons per day of water for cooling.

Add the environmental impact, along with the wider concerns of AI, and Musk's increasing volatility, to the list of reasons that Colossus should make you nervous. There's a lot to do.