Elon Musk says xAI has bought a third building near Memphis to lift Colossus training capacity to almost 2 gigawatts.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Musk says the third building buy pushes xAI training compute to almost 2GW.
- The building is called MACROHARDRR, a name Musk shared on X.
- Reports place the site in Southaven, Mississippi, next to Colossus 2.
- xAI has discussed scaling Colossus toward at least 1 million GPUs.
- The buildout spotlights power, cooling, and water as core AI constraints.
Where The New Building Fits In xAI’s Memphis Footprint
xAI has already built one AI data center in Memphis, commonly referred to as Colossus, and it is constructing a second nearby site known as Colossus 2. The new purchase adds a third footprint to that cluster.
Musk did not disclose the building’s address, but reporting tied to property records places it in Southaven, Mississippi, adjoining the Colossus 2 site. The plan is to convert the warehouse into a data center during 2026.
xAI has bought a third building called MACROHARDRR. — Elon Musk, Founder, xAI
The name reads like a riff on Microsoft, but the practical point is square footage for servers, networking, and cooling that can support large-scale model training.
Will take @xAI training compute to almost 2GW. — Elon Musk, Founder, xAI
What “Almost 2GW” Means For AI Training
A 2 gigawatt target is about power draw, not a single machine spec. One estimate compares that level of electricity to roughly what 1.5 million U.S. homes might use in a year.
That power is being chased because xAI has also outlined plans to scale Colossus toward at least 1 million GPUs, aligning with the industry trend toward bigger clusters for training frontier-scale models.
A simple way to think about what that scale demands is below:
- Reliable bulk power, via grid capacity plus dedicated on-site infrastructure
- Cooling systems designed for dense GPU racks and sustained utilization
- Water planning for heat rejection and operational resiliency
- High-bandwidth networking to keep multi-building training efficient
Power And Water Are Now Part Of The Colossus Story
Reporting around the expansion also ties the new data center and Colossus 2 to nearby generation plans, including a natural gas power plant said to be under development in the area. That detail is driving renewed criticism from environmental advocates.
Water is the other constraint. Separate reporting describes “millions of gallons” per day of expected site usage, alongside an earlier plan for an $80 million wastewater treatment facility that could enable reuse of about 13 million gallons per day.
Even if the compute roadmap stays on track, this buildout will likely be judged on operational reliability and how visibly xAI manages energy and water impacts at gigawatt scale.
Conclusion
xAI’s third building purchase adds physical room for servers and infrastructure, and Musk says it moves the Memphis-area training footprint toward 2GW of compute capacity.
The bigger signal is strategic: AI performance is increasingly gated by power, cooling, and supply, and xAI is treating those constraints as first-class parts of its model-building plan.
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31st December 2025
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