Musk’s company is the first in the world to exceed the 1 GW threshold for AI computing
18 January 15:12
Elon Musk announced on his social media page X the launch of Colossus 2, the industry’s first gigawatt-scale computing cluster for training artificial intelligence. The supercomputer will be used to train future versions of Grok and other xAI products.
According to Musk, Colossus 2’s power consumption will increase to 1.5 GW by April, exceeding the peak load of the city of San Francisco.
The key challenge of the project was power supply: the local power grid in Memphis was unable to provide the necessary capacity. In response, xAI acquired a mothballed Duke Energy power plant in the neighboring state of Mississippi.
In addition, as of summer 2025, the company has ordered an additional power plant abroad due to a shortage of capacity in the US domestic market. The facility is currently supported by seven 35 MW gas turbines, while Tesla Megapack battery systems are used to smooth out consumption peaks.
Colossus 2 will be an extension of the existing Colossus 1 cluster, which has about 230,000 GPUs. The new data center plans to install up to 550,000 NVIDIA GB200 and GB300 generation accelerators. In December 2025, xAI also acquired a third MACROHARDRR building, which will increase the total capacity of the complex to 2 GW, equivalent to the energy supply of about 1.5 million households.
According to EPOCH AI analysts, xAI was the first technology company to exceed 1 GW of computing power for AI training. Competitors — OpenAI with its Stargate project in Texas and Amazon in partnership with Anthropic in Indiana — plan to reach a comparable level only in 2026.
