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Elon Musk has just spent a whopping one billion dollars on a massive gas turbine company and there is a bizarre reason behind the move.
The world’s richest man, who last month briefly became the first and only trillionaire on the planet, has snapped up a fleet of mobile gas and diesel turbines for the price of $1 billion.
This comes as Musk quietly purchased APR Energy, as reported by Electrek.
On the APR Energy website, it states how the firm delivers ‘both interim and permanent power, behind-the-meter or grid-connected, with end-to-end ownership covering design, procurement, permitting, interconnection, construction, commissioning, and O&M’.
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It continues: “With over 20 years of mission-critical experience, our custom power plants are designed for data center developers, hyperscalers, and AI infrastructure firms - engineered to handle the demands of high-density GPUs, advanced cooling, and AI workloads.”
So, why has the tech mogul decided to buy such an expensive new business venture? According to reports, this fleet, which has the capacity to generate over 1 GW of power, could be the answer to keeping Musk’s xAI firm in business.
The acquisition has led to much speculation that this could be a strategic move on Musk’s part in order to keep his AI company running.
This comes as the AI industry faces increasing issues with powering their artificially intelligent models.
As the industry grows, so does its demand for power, and the need for new infrastructure to power new data centers is struggling to keep up.
The building of a data center can take up to two years and the upgrading of the electricity grid can often take much longer.
But this isn’t the only challenge, because almost every piece of electricity used by these powerful AI chips is turned into heat and if the computers aren’t kept cool, they can slow down or even fail.
This means the centers also require huge cooling systems to run in order to stop the equipment from overheating.
In other xAI news, the AI company has filed a lawsuit arguing that a man named Terry Harwood misused Grok to create sexually explicit content of a child.
According to the lawsuit, the terms of service for xAI enforce ‘its rules against violators through account suspensions, account terminations, and by reporting suspected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’.
This comes after Harwood was arrested in February on charges relating to the exploitation of minors.
The suit goes on to claim: “Defendant’s actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage.”
