Elon Musk’s xAI has claimed to have launched the world’s ‘most powerful’ AI cluster, Colossus, with plans to increase its size even more.
The tech CEO and billionaire announced the launch of the Colossus 100k H100 training cluster in a post on X (Sep. 2). Musk applauded the “excellent work by the [xAI] team, Nvidia and our many partners/suppliers”
“This weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online,” he wrote. “From start to finish, it was done in 122 days. Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months.”
This weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online. From start to finish, it was done in 122 days.
Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will double in size to 200k (50k H200s) in a few months.
Excellent…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2024
Colossus boasts a massive 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, which is a huge amount when compared to other competitors. For example, ChatGPT uses an estimated 30,000 A100 GPUs. xAI’s Colossus was built in just 122 days and there are reportedly plans for it to double in size down the line.
What does this mean Colossus and the wider AI sector?
The massive amount of GPUs certainly goes some way towards verifying Musk’s claim that Colossus is the ‘most powerful AI training system in the world.’ That’s another competitor entering the already crowded generative AI space that could help xAI’s Grok become an even more serious contender in the AI space.
There’s not that much catching up to do in some ways, with xAI’s Grok 2 recently catching up to OpenAI’s GPT-4 in record time. Grok 2 was only trained on roughly 15,000 GPUs, so the performance increase with Colossus’ 100,000 GPUs is sure to be sizeable, being six times more powerful.
The xAI team and future versions of Grok will therefore likely be able to put renewed pressure on OpenAI, Google, and others in the generative AI space to deliver new results.
Featured image: Midjourney
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