The Wall Street Journal reports:

For Elon Musk, ground zero of the artificial intelligence arms race is a 114-acre tract of grass and swamp on the state line of Tennessee and Mississippi.

This once-sleepy plot of land, filled with groves of water-rooted tupelo trees at its western edge, is now part of a growing empire Musk is accumulating in the Deep South, just a few miles from Elvis Presley’s homestead at Graceland.

Labor crews hired by Musk’s xAI were excavating power equipment on the site—a defunct energy plant just over the state line in Mississippi—and preparing to build a new plant capable of generating over a gigawatt of electricity, enough to power around 800,000 homes. Engineering permits show that Musk plans to route transmission lines that will connect the new power plant to a million-square-foot data center that is also under development just north of the border, in Tennessee.

Memphis is the front line of Musk’s costly foray into the AI wars. His artificial intelligence company, xAI, has already built one massive data center here in the Bluff City that it calls the world’s largest supercomputer. That facility, called “Colossus,” houses over 200,000 Nvidia chips and powers the technology behind the AI chatbot Grok. Now, Musk is close to finishing the second facility, which will be even bigger. He calls it Colossus 2.

The AI arms race is shaping up as the most expensive corporate battle of the 21st century, with the belief that the first to the finish line will dominate the market, making speed crucial. Money also makes the difference: The more cutting-edge chips companies have, the smarter their models are. But at this stage it’s unclear if or when the enormous investments will pay off.

Technology companies that are splashing out to hire AI talent are writing even bigger checks to build the infrastructure needed to power cutting-edge AI models. Morgan Stanley estimates companies will spend over $3 trillion on AI infrastructure through 2028.

Musk, who has been at the forefront of innovation in electric vehicles, rockets and brain-computer interfaces, is in the unusual position of playing catch-up to rivals like Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Finishing Colossus 2 will cost tens of billions of dollars, some AI and data center experts say. The Nvidia chips alone cost a fortune: Musk will need to spend at least $18 billion for the roughly 300,000 more chips he needs to complete the Memphis project, a person familiar with the project’s financials said. Musk said in July that Colossus 2 will have a total of 550,000 chips and has separately signaled it could eventually have a million processing units. [Continue reading…]

The Cool Down reports:

Across the five companies he runs and even in his brief foray into government with the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has a well-earned reputation for being a demanding boss. While this trait has helped him build a business empire that spans multiple industries and amass vast personal wealth, it seems that many of those working for him have had enough.

In a detailed report based on conversations with more than a dozen current and former Musk employees, the Financial Times highlighted the massive turnover that has been taking place among the top ranks across all of Musk’s companies.

According to the Forbes Billionaires List, Musk is the wealthiest human on Earth, with a personal fortune of nearly $500 billion. However, the same drive and intense focus that led him to that level of financial success can also make him very challenging to work for.

Add in Musk’s increasingly controversial political stances, and many employees, both relatively new hires and long-term workers, have decided to take their talents elsewhere.

“The one constant in Elon’s world is how quickly he burns through deputies,” an anonymous Musk advisor told FT. “Even the board jokes, there’s time and then there’s ‘Tesla time.’ It’s a 24/7 campaign-style work ethos. Not everyone is cut out for that.” [Continue reading…]