The xAI supercomputer is up and running in Memphis, though local environmental advocacy groups are none too pleased about the project — nor how it was handled.
On Wednesday, members of the Memphis Community Against Pollution, Protect Our Aquifer, Young, Gifted & Green, and others met at Fourth Bluff Park in Downtown Memphis to call out the Greater Memphis Chamber and its handling of the xAI deal.
“We deserve better, we all deserve clean air,” Memphis Community Against Pollution President KeShaun Pearson said during the event.
The news conference was in response to a letter the aforementioned organizations (16 in total) wrote to the Chamber requesting the Chamber “directly engage with the Southwest Memphis community to address questions related to xAI.” The groups are also asking the Chamber to prioritize community input moving forward.
The Greater Memphis Chamber could not be reached for comment regarding the letter or the advocacy groups’ claims.
On Sept. 2, xAI founder Elon Musk posted on X, a social platform he also owns (formerly known as Twitter), that the xAI team brought its data processing chip cluster online. The cluster, called Colossus, is powered by 100,000 H1 Nvidia chips. In June, University of Memphis professor and computer science researcher Santosh Kuma said the energy used in one of those chips is comparable to the energy output of a single household, or essentially 100,000 households .