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Memphis warns it may not be able to power Elon Musk's lofty 'Colossus' {AI} supercomputer expansion plans
https://fortune.com/2025/01/07/memphis-utility-ceo-warns-power-supply-elon-musk-xai-colossus-supercomputer-facility/Paywall - cannot even read it, but Memphis is a Democratic city. Why in the actual fuck would they have allowed this piece of republiCON shit to put this thing in Memphis?
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Fortune - Memphis warns it may not be able to power Elon Musk’s lofty ‘Colossus’ supercomputer expansion plans
BY Jessica Mathews
January 8, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC
In December, one of xAI’s executives got up on stage in front of city leaders in Memphis, and announced that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company was working on an enormous expansion to the “Colossus” supercomputer facility it had recently put together to train its AI model, Grok.
The planned buildout would create an even greater colossus, a behemoth capable of housing a heaping 1 million Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)—a 900% increase to the 100,000 GPUs that xAI’s existing Memphis facility currently has.
But an important wrinkle has recently come to light that could affect Musk’s grand plans: Whether Memphis even has the power framework needed to support such a facility.
During a Memphis City Council meeting on Tuesday, the CEO of Memphis’ utility company warned that such an expansion might not even be possible without building new infrastructure.
“People can announce many things, and I think that’s important for our community—that we get excited about opportunities that are coming. But as you know, there’s pragmatic realities about a lot of things,” Doug McGowan, CEO of MGLW, the public utility that services the Memphis region, said during the meeting. He added later: “It is a physics problem, not a political problem, about how much energy can be provided here.”
/snip
BY Jessica Mathews
January 8, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC
In December, one of xAI’s executives got up on stage in front of city leaders in Memphis, and announced that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company was working on an enormous expansion to the “Colossus” supercomputer facility it had recently put together to train its AI model, Grok.
The planned buildout would create an even greater colossus, a behemoth capable of housing a heaping 1 million Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)—a 900% increase to the 100,000 GPUs that xAI’s existing Memphis facility currently has.
But an important wrinkle has recently come to light that could affect Musk’s grand plans: Whether Memphis even has the power framework needed to support such a facility.
During a Memphis City Council meeting on Tuesday, the CEO of Memphis’ utility company warned that such an expansion might not even be possible without building new infrastructure.
“People can announce many things, and I think that’s important for our community—that we get excited about opportunities that are coming. But as you know, there’s pragmatic realities about a lot of things,” Doug McGowan, CEO of MGLW, the public utility that services the Memphis region, said during the meeting. He added later: “It is a physics problem, not a political problem, about how much energy can be provided here.”
/snip
I knew someone in our amazing community would post the pertinent parts.
PS - I hope I'm wrong, but I'm guessing we wlll all see these initiatives to be among the very first the govt of pootin will try to roll out because scumbag gov Lee is always a step ahead...
WHY in the hell would they allow this?
This monstrosity in its original form was said to need 1,000,000 gallons of water a day! 
Can't politicians just FOR ONCE do something just because it's the right thing to do? 
No to mention that the power grid here is SO old, NEVER maintained (most parts are 40-50 years old!) and power outages are quite frequent.
Gee, I wonder why everyone's electric bill is going up AGAIN! 