Elon Musk’s xAI Bets Big: One Million GPUs, a Transplanted Power Plant, and the Future of AI
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is preparing to build one of the world’s largest and most powerful data centers — and it’s bringing its own power plant.
According to tech analyst Dylan Patel, Musk’s team is acquiring a full-scale power plant from overseas and plans to ship it to the U.S. to power xAI’s next-generation data center. The facility is expected to house up to 1 million AI GPUs and draw as much as 2 gigawatts of power — equivalent to the electricity used by nearly 1.9 million homes.
Musk confirmed the report on social media, signaling a massive step forward in AI infrastructure and an equally large leap into the energy sector.
The Power-Hungry Future of AI
xAI’s current “Colossus” data center near Memphis, Tennessee, already hosts 200,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs and draws 300 megawatts of power. That’s made possible by 35 on-site gas turbines and Tesla Megapack batteries for load balancing.
The next facility will be even more ambitious. A data center built to train and run AI models on a million Nvidia Blackwell GPUs is expected to consume between 1.4 and 1.96 gigawatts, factoring in energy for cooling, CPUs, networking, and storage.
Why Ship a Power Plant?
Building new power infrastructure in the U.S. can take years. Rather than wait, xAI is reportedly buying a combined-cycle gas plant from overseas and shipping it stateside — a move that signals the growing urgency around powering AI clusters at scale.
Solar isn’t viable for 24/7 compute of this size, and nuclear energy takes too long to deploy. Natural gas, for now, is the fastest, most scalable option — especially when companies like xAI need massive, consistent energy immediately.
A New Strategy for Compute + Energy
xAI’s move is part of a broader trend among leading AI labs: consolidating compute, securing talent, and generating power in-house. This ensures control over critical infrastructure and avoids being throttled by utility limitations or slow-moving public grids.
Musk isn’t just building AI — he’s building the physical stack beneath it. By owning the power source, xAI is aiming to guarantee the uptime, scale, and flexibility needed to stay ahead in the global AI race.
The Bottom Line
The next great AI frontier won’t just be written in code — it will be engineered in megawatts. With 1 million AI chips and a power plant to match, xAI is positioning itself as a full-stack AI and energy company. The future of artificial intelligence, it turns out, runs on electricity — and lots of it.
