
Elon Musk said his xAI business could more than double the Nvidia chip count at its Colossus 2 computing cluster by the end of the year, laying out the most detailed expansion timetable yet for the Memphis-area facility.
Colossus 2 currently runs 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300 chips, Musk said in a post on X on Friday.
A further 220,000 GB300 chips are due to come online next week, with another 220,000 expected in November.
A third batch of 220,000 chips may follow in late December “if we get lucky,” he said.
Following an earlier buildout
Musk’s post also gave an updated specification for Colossus 1, the cluster’s first phase, which he said runs 150,000 H100 chips, 50,000 H200 chips and 30,000 GB200 chips.
xAI has previously said it plans to equip the Memphis facility with 1 million GPUs by the end of 2026.
If all three planned GB300 waves land on schedule, Colossus 2 alone would reach roughly 1.21 million chips, already surpassing that stated 1 million GPU target.
Combined with Colossus 1’s existing 230,000 chips, the Memphis site’s total would reach approximately 1.44 million GPUs by year-end.
Nvidia’s GB200 and GB300 chips are part of its Blackwell generation of AI processors, built for training and running large AI models.
The GB300 is a newer, higher-performance variant of the GB200, and both chips have been in strong demand across the AI industry this year.
Part of a broader compute race
xAI has framed the Colossus buildout as central to its ambition to compete with rivals including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic in training frontier AI models.
The Memphis cluster has previously drawn scrutiny over its power demands, with reports noting the facility has required significant local electricity and water infrastructure to support its rapid expansion.
Musk’s announcement lands against the backdrop of continued strong demand for Nvidia’s AI chips more broadly.
Nvidia reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion for the period ended July 26, 2026, up 106% year over year, with data center revenue, its AI chip business, rising 117% to $89 billion.
The company has guided for revenue of $108 billion in the current quarter, which would mark its first $100 billion quarter.
Nvidia shares closed at $224.58 on Thursday, down 0.41%, before rising to $226.04 in premarket trading Friday, up 1.46 points.
The stock’s day range spanned $221.09 to $224.94, and its market capitalization stood at $5.42 trillion.
What to watch next
The pace of Colossus 2’s expansion will depend on Nvidia’s chip supply and xAI’s ability to bring new capacity online on schedule, something Musk himself flagged as uncertain for the final planned batch.
xAI has said its Memphis compute capacity also supports AI workloads for outside customers adding a further dimension to how quickly the buildout needs to scale.
Nvidia’s next scheduled earnings report due somewhere in the end of November this year.
The report will offer the next major data point on whether chip demand from xAI and other large AI buyers is translating into revenue growth at the pace the market has priced in.
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