Latest news with #xAI
Business Insider
32 minutes ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Zuck is building Meta data centers in tents now, part of a mad dash to catch up in AI
Mark Zuckerberg is in full founder mode again. This time it's the AI version. Meta fell behind in the generative AI race earlier this year when the company rolled out its Llama 4 model. The product was not up to scratch, compared to rival offerings from DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Since then, Zuck has gone on a hiring bender, personally recruiting top AI talent with pay packages in the $100 million range and more. That's just one ingredient for success in generative AI. Another is high-quality data. Hence, Meta's weird $14 billion deal to buy just under half of Scale AI and its leader, Alex Wang. The third ingredient required is infrastructure, which is tech jargon for the AI chips (GPUs, etc), networking gear, and data centers needed to build, refine, and run giant AI models such as the Llama series. On Friday, SemiAnalysis blew the lid off Zuck's big plans for Meta's huge new AI infrastructure. You can read the report here. You'll need to pay to read the whole thing, but if you're serious about AI, you will prob want to shell out. Zuck confirmed some of the details of SemiAnalysis's report via a Facebook post on Monday. The CEO said Meta will build several new AI data centers that use more than 1 gigawatt of power each. This is how data center capacity is measured, and anything in the 1 gigawatt range is absolutely massive (or at least it was until now). Data centers in tents The thing that really caught my eye in the SemiAnalysis report is that Meta is building some of these AI data centers in tents right now. A Meta spokesperson confirmed this. Data centers house a lot of complex, expensive gear and they need to be kept cool in really controlled ways, otherwise some of the pricey gear will overheat. So, building data centers in tents is a sign of how quickly Zuck is moving to get Meta's new AI data centers up and running. Remember when Elon Musk had Tesla making Model 3 cars in tents outside the company's Fremont factory in 2018? That was about speed to market, and Zuck is now doing this for data centers — likely taking a page from Elon's strategy book. "Inspired by xAI's unprecedented time-to-market, Meta is embracing a datacenter design that prioritizes speed above all else," Semianalysis wrote in their Friday report. "They're already building more of them! Traditional datacenter and real estate investors, still somewhat reeling from xAI's Memphis site and time to market, will be shocked yet again." "From prefabricated power and cooling modules to ultra-light structures, speed is of the essence," it added. Tents get really hot, so this could be a challenge for running these prefab AI data centers. Indeed, Semianalysis reported that Meta could shut down workloads during the hottest summer days. Over the long term, Meta will likely build full data centers, but in the short and medium term, the company needs these facilities up and running "as soon as possible," Dylan Patel, CEO of SemiAnalysis, told me on Monday. And here's the full post from Zuck on Monday: "For our superintelligence effort, I'm focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry. We're also going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence. We have the capital from our business to do this. SemiAnalysis just reported that Meta is on track to be the first lab to bring a 1GW+ supercluster online. "We're actually building several multi-GW clusters. We're calling the first one Prometheus, and it's coming online in '26. We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years. We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan. "Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher. I'm looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!"
France 24
an hour ago
- Business
- France 24
Elon Musk's xAI inks Pentagon deal for contentious Grok chatbot
Launched at the end of 2023, Grok has rarely been out of the headlines for its offensive gaffes, and will now offer its services as "Grok for Government." In addition to the Pentagon contract, "every federal government department, agency, or office (can now) purchase xAI products" thanks to its inclusion on an official supplier list, xAI added. After an update on July 7, the chatbot praised Adolf Hitler in some responses, denounced on X "anti-white hate", and described Jewish representation in Hollywood as "disproportionate." xAI apologized on Saturday for extremist and offensive messages, and said it had corrected the instructions that led to the incidents. The new version of the chatbot, Grok 4, presented on Wednesday, consulted Musk's positions on some questions it was asked before responding, an AFP correspondent saw. The contract between xAI and the Department of Defense comes even as Musk and President Donald Trump are locked in a bitter feud. The two men became close during Trump's latest run for the presidency and, following the inauguration, the Republican billionaire entrusted Musk with managing the new agency known as DOGE to slash the government by firing tens of thousands of civil servants. After ending his assignment in May, the South African-born entrepreneur publicly criticized Trump's major budget bill for increasing government debt. The president and the businessman engaged in heated exchanges on social media and in public statements before Musk apologized for some of his more combative messages. The government and the defense sector are considered a potential growth driver for AI giants. Meta has partnered with the start-up Anduril to develop virtual reality headsets for soldiers and law enforcement, while in June OpenAI secured a contract to provide AI services to the US military. © 2025 AFP
CTV News
an hour ago
- Business
- CTV News
Elon Musk's xAI inks Pentagon deal for contentious Grok chatbot
Grok is the AI chatbot available through the social media platform X. (Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource) NEW YORK — Elon Musk's xAI, which features a large language model that has spewed Hitler-supporting rhetoric and antisemitic tropes, said Monday it has signed a deal to provide its services to the U.S. Department of Defense. Launched at the end of 2023, Grok has rarely been out of the headlines for its offensive gaffes, and will now offer its services as 'Grok for Government.' In addition to the Pentagon contract, 'every federal government department, agency, or office (can now) purchase xAI products' thanks to its inclusion on an official supplier list, xAI added. After an update on July 7, the chatbot praised Adolf Hitler in some responses, denounced on X 'anti-white hate', and described Jewish representation in Hollywood as 'disproportionate.' xAI apologized on Saturday for extremist and offensive messages, and said it had corrected the instructions that led to the incidents. The new version of the chatbot, Grok 4, presented on Wednesday, consulted Musk's positions on some questions it was asked before responding, an AFP correspondent saw. The contract between xAI and the U.S. Department of Defense comes even as Musk and President Donald Trump are locked in a bitter feud. The two men became close during Trump's latest run for the presidency and, following the inauguration, the Republican billionaire entrusted Musk with managing the new agency known as DOGE to slash the government by firing tens of thousands of civil servants. After ending his assignment in May, the South African-born entrepreneur publicly criticized Trump's major budget bill for increasing government debt. The president and the businessman engaged in heated exchanges on social media and in public statements before Musk apologized for some of his more combative messages. The government and the defence sector are considered a potential growth driver for AI giants. Meta has partnered with the start-up Anduril to develop virtual reality headsets for soldiers and law enforcement, while in June OpenAI secured a contract to provide AI services to the U.S. military.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Automotive
- Los Angeles Times
Musk says he will seek shareholder approval for Tesla investment in xAI
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he would like Tesla to invest in his artificial intelligence company xAI. While Musk is considering the relationship between several of his businesses, he said on X that he does not support a merger between Tesla and xAI. 'If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago,' Musk wrote on X on Sunday. 'We will have a shareholder vote on the matter.' xAI is the company behind the controversial chatbot Grok, which is available on X and also used in Teslas delivered on or after July 12. Grok came under fire earlier this month for praising Adolf Hitler and making antisemitic comments. The AI company apologized for the chatbot's behavior, saying that a coding problem temporarily made Grok susceptible to extremist views posted on X. Earlier, Grok had contradicted itself while sharing information about the deadly flash floods that killed at least 130 people in Texas this month. The bot blamed President Trump for the flooding, but then backtracked and understated the death toll. Musk is scrambling to keep up in the AI race after helping launch OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015, the company behind the wildly popular chatbot ChatGPT, which helped spur on the current AI craze. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and is now entangled in legal battles with the company. In March, xAI acquired X in an all-stock transaction that valued the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion. Musk scored a victory for Grok on Monday, when xAI announced 'Grok for Government' and a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. After a disruptive stint in the Trump administration that sent Tesla shares stumbling, Musk formally stepped down from his role in the federal government in May. He has since been feuding with the president, further risking Tesla's reputation, according to some experts. Tesla shares rose slightly Monday after Musk's posts about Tesla's possible investment in xAI. The shares have fallen more than 16% this year. The company's profit plunged 71% in the first quarter. Tesla delivered 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter through June, down 13% from 443,956 deliveries a year ago. Its shares rose more than 1% Monday.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- Business
- The Guardian
xAI announces $200m US military deal after Grok chatbot had Nazi meltdown
The week after its Grok chatbot identified itself as 'MechaHitler' and generated antisemitic posts, Elon Musk's xAI firm announced a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m. The deal is for developing and implementing artificial intelligence tools for the agency. The DoD on Monday also announced similar contracts with $200m ceilings with several other major US-based artificial intelligence developers, including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. The agency is partnering with the General Services Administration to make these companies' AI tools available for use throughout the federal government. 'Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems,' the US chief digital and AI officer Dr Doug Matty said in a statement. The contracts deepen the US military's ties with AI developers and are poised to expand the use of artificial intelligence within the US government after Musk's so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) oversaw mass firings of workers throughout federal agencies. Until Musk's recent falling out with Donald Trump, the xAI founder was de facto leader of Doge as it gutted government agencies and in some cases pushed for departments to use the Grok chatbot. xAI's contract announcement comes after the company was forced to issue a public apology after Grok posted a string of responses on X last week that included promoting Nazi ideology and rape fantasies. The company claimed that it fixed the issue and subsequently unveiled its latest AI model with a $300 a month subscription for an advanced version of the tool. The DoD's contract will give xAI a boost of revenue as it seeks to compete with more established AI developers like OpenAI, which is led by Musk's former associate turned rival, Sam Altman. Musk has been heavily promoting xAI and attempting to use other parts of his tech empire to support its future, including having SpaceX invest $2bn into the startup, allowing it to acquire X, formerly, Twitter, and announcing on Sunday that Tesla shareholders will vote on their own investment in xAI. xAI announced the deal and the creation of what it calls 'Grok For Government' in a post on its website on Monday, detailing that in addition to its publicly available products it would create custom AI-powered applications for potential use in healthcare, national security and other public services. 'Under the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers,' xAI said in a statement on its website. 'These customers will be able to use the Grok family of products to accelerate America – from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology.' Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Musk has long complained that AI chatbots are designed to promote 'woke' ideology and vowed his Grok product would be 'maximally truth seeking'. It has repeatedly run into controversy over promoting conspiracies and falsehoods, including earlier this year giving unprompted responses that made false claims of 'white genocide' taking place in South Africa – echoing claims that Musk has made himself. Ethics watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers and privacy advocates have expressed concerns about how Musk and Doge have implemented AI in government and gained access to sensitive data while embedded at government agencies. Doge staffers previously fed government data into a custom version of Grok's chatbot in a potential violation of privacy and security laws, Reuters reported in May.
