Dell and Supermicro Build Nvidia-Powered AI Supercomputer for Elon Musk’s xAI Startup

Dell and Supermicro Build Nvidia-Powered AI Supercomputer for Elon Musk’s xAI Startup

Dell Technologies and Supermicro are collaborating to build an Nvidia-powered AI supercomputer for Elon Musk's xAI startup. Michael Dell confirmed the partnership, stating they are creating a Dell AI factory with Nvidia to support Grok, xAI's generative chatbot. However, Dell is responsible for assembling only half of the server racks, while Supermicro will handle the other half.

Musk recently announced that xAI is close to bringing 100,000 liquid-cooled Nvidia H100 GPUs online, likely located in North Dakota. Despite this, Musk expressed dissatisfaction with the H100's efficiency and suggested that the next step would be to use around 300,000 Nvidia B200 GPUs, connected by Nvidia's 800Gb/s ConnectX-8 NICs, by next summer.

xAI's acquisition of Nvidia GPUs has sparked controversy, especially after Musk prioritized an order for 12,000 H100 GPUs from Tesla to xAI. Musk argued that Tesla couldn't use the GPUs due to deployment issues. While xAI focuses on Nvidia for its Grok chatbot, Tesla is using Nvidia GPUs for its self-driving program and is developing its own supercomputer system, Dojo. However, Musk's interest in Dojo seems to have diminished, as he recently described it as a "long shot" and is hedging his bets with Nvidia GPUs.