Supercomputers/Systems/xAI Colossus 2
USA · operational · ai training
xAI Colossus 2
Deep dive: xAI Colossus: fast to build, hard to count
Operated by xAI at xAI Colossus 2 (Whitehaven, Memphis) .
Phase 1 seed dataset, compiled by hand. These rows were built from public operator, laboratory and vendor sources. A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1092 of 1153 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 40 are genuinely weakly sourced. Every claim carries its source and a confidence tier. Treat anything below verified as a lead, not a citation.
Measured performance
- Rmax
- -
- Rpeak
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- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
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- Cores
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- Power
- -
- Per watt
- - GF/W
Figures are as last publicly reported for the configuration described below, not a live measurement. Where a system was upgraded in place, the post-upgrade configuration is shown and the earlier one appears in the timeline.
What this machine is made of
One row per supplier relationship. “Supplier at build” is the company that shipped the part at the time; where that company has since been acquired, the parent it rolls up to today is shown beside it. That distinction is what makes ticker-level aggregation possible across a thirty-year dataset.
| Role | Part | Supplier at build | Quantity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerator | NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 Accelerators Arm CPU + CUDA GPU · TSMC 4NP NVIDIA GB200/GB300-class GPUs; reported counts range from roughly 110,000 at first light (January 2026) to a later-reported 550,000, per Musk's public statements rather than an xAI technical disclosure, so no single quantity is recorded | NVIDIA | - | Reported | actionnews5.comintrol.com |
AI datacenter metrics
Figures beyond an accelerator count, each with who stated it. What can and cannot be compared across AI datacenters.
| Metric | Value | As of | Basis | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accelerators | 220,000 accelerators | 2026-05 | Regulatory filing | S-1: 110,000 GB200 plus 110,000 GB300 clusters (sum is ours); S-1 expects at least 220,000 more GB300 when the next phase is operational, no date | sec.gov |
| Stated investment | 20 USD bn | 2026-01 | Operator stated | Mississippi governor announced a $20 bn xAI investment at the Southaven site; S-1 counts Southaven within Colossus II; other coverage says more than $20 bn | wlbt.com |
| Facility power | 1,276 MW | 2026-06-15 | Third-party estimate | Epoch AI modelled gross facility power (IT plus cooling and overhead) at this timeline date. | epoch.ai |
| IT power | 946 MW | 2026-06-15 | Third-party estimate | Epoch AI modelled IT power from satellite imagery and permits at this timeline date; not operator-stated. Assumes the S-1 next phase is online; S-1 itself states 430 MW. | epoch.ai |
| IT power | 430 MW | 2026-05 | Regulatory filing | S-1: about 210 MW plus 220 MW compute power (sum is ours), excluding cooling; S-1 expects over 400 MW more when the next phase is operational, no date | sec.gov |
How it is powered
| Source | Provider | MW | Status | As of | Basis | Note | Source link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| On-site gas | xAI | 1,300 | operating | 2026-05 | Third-party estimate | Cleanview counts about 59 temporary mobile turbines (about 1.3 GW) at Southaven in May 2026. S-1 confirms a self-built gigawatt-scale gas plant can run COLOSSUS II alone. | cleanview.cosec.gov |
| On-site gas | xAI | 1,200 | permitted | 2026-03 | Regulatory filing | MDEQ permit 10 Mar 2026 for 41 turbines (17 PGM-130, 16 Titan 350, 8 PE6000); about 1.2 GW is MeasuredAI and Cleanview sum of unit ratings. Cleanview: not yet installed. | selc.orgmeasuredai.substack.com |
| Battery storage | Tesla | - | operating | 2026-05 | Operator stated | S-1 cites the largest Megapack deployment integrated with its data centers; MeasuredAI cites over 375 million USD of Megapacks at Colossus 2. No MW given. | sec.govmeasuredai.substack.com |
| Grid | Memphis Light, Gas and Water | - | planned | 2026-05 | Operator stated | S-1: COLOSSUS II to be supplemented over time by utility-funded grid capacity. MLGW (May 2025) had grid options of 260 MW to 1.1 GW under discussion, no final request. | sec.govmlgw.com |
How AI campuses are powered: capacities are what the operator, utility or filing states, not what has been delivered.
The read
A second, physically distinct xAI supercluster in the Memphis area, built at 5420 Tulane Road in the Whitehaven area of Memphis with associated gas turbine power generation across the state line in Southaven, Mississippi, separate from the original Colossus site (xai-colossus-1) at the former Electrolux factory in South Memphis. Mississippi's governor announced an expansion of the site in January 2026 quoting Elon Musk directly that combined Colossus training compute was approaching "~2GW", and Introl's infrastructure industry blog independently reports an initial GB200/GB300 cluster reaching roughly 1 GW for Colossus 2 alone, though the reported GPU count shifts across sources and over time (on the order of 110,000 GPUs at first light in January 2026, reported by other outlets as growing toward 550,000 later in the year) and, while the earliest roughly 110,000 figure is an outside analyst's estimate from cooling capacity, the larger figures rest on Musk's public statements rather than an xAI technical disclosure. Given that spread, no specific GPU count is recorded on this row; the accelerator component row below carries the range with confidence reported and flags it as an estimate. No FLOPS, interconnect vendor or cooling vendor is independently confirmed for this system specifically.
Site & facility
xAI Colossus 2 (Whitehaven, Memphis)
- Location
- Memphis, TN, USA
- Commissioned
- 2026
Change history
- 2026-10-04 AI datacenter metrics: xAI Colossus 2
- 2026-09-24 Added xAI Colossus 2, a second Memphis-area xAI supercluster distinct from Colossus 1
Source check
We fetched this system's own citations and recorded whether each page actually mentions it. This is a corroboration signal, not a fact check, and it is published so you can see how well the sourcing holds up rather than take it on trust.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| introl.com | names system and part | NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 |
| actionnews5.com | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.
Related news
- xAI's Colossus 2 reaches 200MW of cooling capacity in six months · SemiAnalysisThe Memphis and Southaven build reached the milestone in about six months against roughly fifteen months for comparable Oracle, Crusoe and OpenAI projects, and is targeted at over 1GW of GB200 NVL72 capacity. It is a data point on how much faster a single well capitalized operator can now stand up gigawatt class capacity than the shared infrastructure neoclouds this dataset also tracks.