Elon Musk reportedly will blow $10 billion on AI this year

Digital Trends

Between Tesla and xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence aspirations person costs immoderate $10 cardinal dollars successful bringing training and conclusion compute capabilities online this year, according to a Thursday station connected X (formerly Twitter) by Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt.

“Tesla already deployed and is training up of schedule connected a 29,000 portion Nvidia H100 cluster astatine Giga Texas – and will person 50,000 H100 capacity by nan extremity of October, and ~85,000 H100 balanced capacity by December,” Merritt noted.

By nan extremity of this year, Elon Musk's companies (Tesla & xAI) will person brought online astir $10 cardinal worthy of training compute capacity successful 2024 alone.

Tesla already deployed and is training up of schedule connected a 29,000 portion Nvidia H100 cluster astatine Giga Texas – and will have… pic.twitter.com/UgvmsBLuQp

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 29, 2024

Tesla besides revealed its Cortex AI cluster successful August, which will beryllium leveraged to train nan company’s Full Self-Driving strategy and uses 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs on pinch different 20,000 Dojo AI chips developed by Tesla itself. The Colossus supercomputer, which Tesla unveiled successful September, uses conscionable arsenic galore H100 GPUs arsenic nan Memphis and is slated to grow by different 50,000 H100 and 50,000 H200 GPUs successful nan coming months.

xAI, connected nan different hand, began assembling its Memphis supercomputer successful July at its Gigafactory of Compute, located successful an aged Electrolux accumulation installation successful Memphis, Tennessee. Musk claims that nan Memphis is “the astir powerful AI training cluster successful nan world,” arsenic it runs connected 100,000 Nvidia’s H100 GPUs, done Musk has promised to double that capacity successful short order. It came online successful September and has since been tasked pinch building nan “world’s astir powerful AI by each metric by December of this year” — likely, Grok 3. xAI has not disclosed really overmuch nan Memphis costs to build, though Tom’s Hardware estimates that nan institution has spent astatine slightest $2 cardinal connected GPUs alone.

The $10 cardinal fig is really half of what, successful April, Musk claimed Tesla would walk this twelvemonth connected AI compute capacity. “Tesla will walk astir $10 cardinal this twelvemonth connected mixed training and conclusion AI, nan second being chiefly successful car,” he posted astatine nan time. “Any institution not spending astatine this level, and doing truthful efficiently, cannot compete.”

By that measure, Musk’s AI efforts are already falling down deep-pocketed rivals for illustration Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google. In July, for example, analysts estimated that OpenAI would walk astir $7 cardinal connected AI compute, while losing astir $5 cardinal connected different operating costs. However, nan institution announced successful early October that its latest information of finance backing totaled $6.6 cardinal astatine a $157 cardinal post-money valuation. “The caller backing will let america to double down connected our activity successful frontier AI research, summation compute capacity, and proceed building devices that thief group lick difficult problems,” nan institution wrote successful its announcement post.

Per a study from Reuters connected Thursday, some Microsoft and Meta are spending freely to build retired their respective AI compute capabilities. Microsoft is reportedly spending arsenic overmuch superior each 4th arsenic it utilized to walk annually anterior to 2020. The institution besides reports that its superior spending accrued by much than 5% successful nan first 4th of 2024, to $20 billion, and expects to walk moreover much successful Q2. Meta, connected nan different hand, has spent arsenic overmuch superior each 4th of 2024 arsenic it did annually until 2017.

As for Google, it reportedly spent $13 cardinal on superior expenditures successful Q3 2024, a 63% summation complete nan aforesaid play past year. What’s more, nan institution has dropped immoderate $38 cardinal into compute infrastructure since nan commencement of nan year, an 80% jump from nan first 3 quarters of 2023. Suddenly, $10 cardinal betwixt a brace of companies and a fistful of projects seems almost quaint.