In November, xAI won approval from the regional power authority in Memphis for 150MW of additional power — enough to power roughly 100,000 homes. To win the agency over, xAI pledged to improve the quality of the city’s drinking water and provide the Memphis grid with discounted Tesla-manufactured batteries. But some residents criticized the move, arguing it would strain the grid and worsen the area’s air quality.
Tesla is also expected to use the upgraded data center to improve its autonomous driving technologies.
xAI has expanded quite rapidly from an operations standpoint in the year since its founding, growing from just a dozen employees in March 2023 to over 100 today. In October, the startup moved into OpenAI’s old corporate offices in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood.