- Bloomberg experiences the contact is for Elon Musk’s X social media platform
- xAi’s Colossus makes use of 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPU and would not appear to be a part of the contract
- Supermicro has had troubles, however continues to be a serious participant in AI {hardware}
The rising demand for computing energy to assist AI workloads has fueled speedy progress available in the market for high-powered servers. It’s a profitable enterprise for corporations like Dell, Supermicro, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, who’ve all seen elevated demand for his or her high-performance server merchandise lately.
A report from Bloomberg claims HPE has secured an enormous deal value greater than $1 billion to provide Elon Musk’s X social community with servers optimized for synthetic intelligence work.
The report doesn’t specify precisely how the servers will probably be used, however because it’s for X, there’s a very good likelihood a few of the capability will probably be for Grok, the social community’s AI chatbot. On the finish of 2024, X introduced that it was rolling out Grok-2 to all customers totally free, and it’s honest to conclude that additional capability would require extra server infrastructure.
Dell and Supermicro outbid
Bloomberg says X’s settlement with HPE was reached in late 2024, in keeping with individuals conversant in the matter.
Musk’s corporations, together with xAI and Tesla, are main patrons of AI {hardware}. The Colossus supercomputer, constructed by xAI in Memphis, was beforehand declared by Musk to be the “strongest AI coaching system on the planet.” The billionaire said it was constructed “from begin to end” in simply 122 days.
Colossus makes use of 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, however there are plans to massively broaden its operations. Supermicro has confronted some challenges just lately, together with the resignation of its auditor and different associated issues. Nevertheless, as MarketWatch experiences, it stays a “main participant within the AI revolution” and just lately established operations in Memphis to assist xAI’s objective of constructing a supercomputer facility with 1 million GPUs.
Supermicro and Dell supplied the servers for Colossus initially, and Bloomberg says that whereas each corporations did bid to provide the gear for this new enterprise they have been finally unsuccessful.
Bloomberg’s report notes, “HPE’s liquid-cooling expertise might have performed a job within the win,” wrote Woo Jin Ho, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Whereas good for gross sales, bigger offers generally is a drag on margins, he added.”