Elon Musk’s xAI Expands Supercomputer Infrastructure With Third Data Center to Boost AI Training Power

Elon Musk announced on Tuesday that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has acquired a third building to further expand its computing infrastructure, signaling a major step in the company’s effort to compete with leading AI developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The move is aimed at dramatically increasing xAI’s training capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts of compute power, a scale that places it among the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects in the world.

According to Musk, the newly purchased building is named “MACROHARDRR,” a name widely interpreted as a playful reference to Microsoft. While Musk did not disclose the exact location, a report by The Information cited property records and sources familiar with the project, stating that the new supersized data center is planned outside Memphis, Tennessee. This expansion builds on xAI’s existing supercomputer cluster in Memphis, known as Colossus, which the company has promoted as the largest AI supercomputer in operation.

xAI is reportedly planning to expand Colossus to eventually house at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs), a critical resource for training advanced artificial intelligence models. The newly acquired warehouse is expected to begin its conversion into a fully operational data center in 2026. In addition, The Information noted that both the new data center and a planned Colossus 2 facility are located near a natural gas power plant that xAI is constructing, along with access to other energy sources to support its massive power needs.

The rapid expansion highlights xAI’s determination to accelerate the development of next-generation AI systems capable of rivaling ChatGPT and Claude. However, the growing footprint of AI data centers has also sparked criticism from environmental activists, who warn about the significant energy consumption and environmental impact associated with large-scale computing infrastructure.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters, but the latest developments underscore the intensifying competition in the AI sector as companies race to secure computing power and scale their operations globally.