Dell Is Teaming Up With Elon Musk to Build an AI Supercomputer Other tech giants like Nvidia are in on the partnership, too.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Michael Dell posted on X on Wednesday that Dell is building an "AI factory with @nvidia to power @grok for @xai @elonmusk."
- Musk clarified that Dell was helping power an xAI supercomputer.
- xAI raised $6 billion last month.
Dell is supercharging Elon Musk's AI chatbot.
Dell CEO Michael Dell announced Wednesday that the company is building an "AI factory" with AI powerhouse Nvidia.
The factory is for Musk's xAI startup and its "rebellious" AI chatbot Grok.
Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell. Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Dell posted the news on Musk-owned platform X, which is currently the only place people can interact with Grok — if they're willing to pay at least $8 per month for an X premium membership.
We're building a Dell AI factory with @nvidia to power @grok for @xai @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/2aTYLtCBup
— Michael Dell (@MichaelDell) June 19, 2024
Musk clarified the same day that xAI is building a supercomputer; a network of tens of thousands of computers that join together for amplified computing power.
According to Musk, Dell is putting together "half of the racks" for that supercomputer. Super Micro Computer, or SMC, will build the other half.
To be precise, Dell is assembling half of the racks that are going into the supercomputer that xAI is building
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2024
xAI is fresh off of a $6 billion fundraising round, which it raised last month. The startup stated it would use the funds for research, infrastructure building, and product development.
Related: Elon Musk Unveils Grok, a 'Spicy' and 'Based' AI Chatbot
xAI is less than a year old but has already introduced two AI models: Grok-1 in November and Grok-1.5 four months later.
Though Grok-1.5 was a step behind competing AI from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in some benchmark tests, it scored higher than ChatGPT on the HumanEval test, which has challenging programming problems.
Musk made Grok-1 open source in March.
Related: Elon Musk Releases the AI Model Behind Grok, a Competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT