Photograph by Trevor Cokley / Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is coming to Memphis and bringing the AI revolution with him.
Musk, who is CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and runs several other companies, is opening a major facility in Memphis that will be the heart of his X.AI Corp (xAI). The Greater Memphis Chamber, which hosted the announcement Wednesday, said it represents the largest single private sector investment in Memphis’ history.
The facility will house what Musk calls a “Gigafactory of Compute” that reports say aims to be ready by fall of 2025. As the billionaire entrepreneur told the Chamber, “My vision is to build the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer, and I’m willing to put it in Memphis.”
xAI was founded in March 2023 and is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. While there are several companies exploring the world of artificial intelligence, Musk is bringing his own vision to what it can and should be, which in the broadest sense is “to understand the true nature of the universe.”
Ted Townsend, president and CEO of the Chamber, said the organization was contacted about three months ago of the company’s interest in locating in Memphis. Prior to that, Phoenix Investment Group of Milwaukee acquired a 200-acre property, plus a 600-acre parcel.
It was Phoenix that provided the connection to xAI, which was interested in the property. Top executives in Musk’s organization wanted to meet right away with the Chamber as well as Doug McGowen, president and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water. It went well.
The deal was not a deal yet, but the interest was clear. There were more meetings in rapid succession with the idea of firming it up and announcing by June.
“The good-paying jobs, the cachet of hosting the world’s most powerful supercomputer, and the significant additional revenues for MLGW this project brings will help support our reliability and grid modernization efforts. These are all wins for our community.” — Doug McGowen, MLGW CEO
Locating the xAI operation here also means associated enterprises will be along for the ride. The facility will need computer chips and servers and skilled, high-tech labor.
“Memphis is positioned to extract the benefit of their presence here, and the enormity of capital investment being deployed here, and the direct and indirect and induced impact from an economic development perspective is truly transforming,” Townsend said.
As for how this will impact the Chamber’s quest to attract more businesses, Townsend said, “This will attract more investment to the Memphis region and we expect that. We’re going to seize every opportunity to show that Memphis is ready to meet the demand when it comes. The only way we’re in this position is that we met them at their pace. Other companies that are needing to move swiftly and establish the infrastructure and the power necessary to do things like a supercomputer or manufacturing facility, we want to tell them that today marks that moment where we’re telling the world that we are ready for further investment.”
Memphis Mayor Paul Young said, "We get things done here. We have great partners at the Greater Memphis Chamber and MLGW who were ready to make this happen. We had an ideal site, ripe for investment. And we had the power of our people who created new and innovative processes to keep up with the pace required to land this transformational project."
McGowen said, “I am proud of our work to provide utilities for such a massive project and to do it quickly. The adaptive reuse of a former manufacturing space and its existing utility infrastructure are exactly the kind of economic development we have been seeking for our city. The good-paying jobs, the cachet of hosting the world’s most powerful supercomputer, and the significant additional revenues for MLGW this project brings will help support our reliability and grid modernization efforts. These are all wins for our community.”
The project is pending approval by the Memphis Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE), Tennessee Valley Authority, and government authorities.
The Securities Exchange Commission reported in December that xAI had raised $134.7 million in outside funding. Last month, the company announced a funding round of $6 billion from key investors.
xAI has already developed Grok, a series of models that have been frequently updated since the initial release last August. Grok-1.5 is available to premium users of X (formerly Twitter).
Musk has long been a fan of science fiction, particularly the works of Douglas Adams, who famously wrote the series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. One of the six volumes in the series is “Life, the Universe and Everything,” which is referenced on xAI’s home page with the slogan “Discover the answers to life, the universe, everything.”
