Elon Musk wants to buy 300,000 Nvidia Blackwells to power new xAI ambitions
As AI models get even bigger and more energy hungry buyers are lining up around the block for Nvidia's latest ultra-powerful GPUs.
Key takeaways
- In an X post, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO revealed that he wants to buy 300,000 worth of Nvidia's latest Blackwell B200 GPUs by next summer.
- The AI was developed on a homebrewed language dubbed Grok-1 that is geared to provide less straightforward answers as well as witty and comedic answers compared to ChatGPT and Gemini.
- Nvidia's new Blackwell B200 is a massive upgrade over the H100, offering four times the training performance and 30 times the inference performance.
Cite or link to this article
Griffin, M. (2024) 'Elon Musk wants to buy 300,000 Nvidia Blackwells to power new xAI ambitions', 311 Institute, 30 July. Available at: https://www.311institute.com/elon-musk-wants-to-buy-300000-nvidia-blackwells-to-power-new-xai-ambitions/ (Accessed: 1 October 2026).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) GPU development is running at breakneck speeds, and Elon Musk wants to be at the forefront of the revolution. In an X post, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO revealed that he wants to buy 300,000 worth of Nvidia's latest Blackwell B200 GPUs by next summer. The new GPUs will upgrade X's existing AI GPU cluster, which currently consists of 100,000 previous-generation H100 GPUs.
100,000 H100 GPUs is already an enormous amount of computing power, but Elon states that given the pace of AI GPU development, it's not worth keeping around X's massive array of H100 GPUs for long, mainly due to its energy consumption of 1 Gigawatt, which is huge!
X uses the massive array of AI GPUs for Grok, an AI bot. The AI was developed on a homebrewed language dubbed Grok-1 that is geared to provide less straightforward answers as well as witty and comedic answers compared to ChatGPT and Gemini. Basically, it is trying to take the "robot" aspect out of the AI bot. The new AI bot is available to X users right now; however, you'll need to be an X Premium user to gain access to the AI bot.
Musk's logic has merit. The AI GPU development race is one of the most heated races we've seen in years in the technological industry, rivalling the CPU development wars we had in the 1990s and 2000s. Nvidia's new Blackwell B200 is a massive upgrade over the H100, offering four times the training performance and 30 times the inference performance.
Technically, the B200 does consume more power. However, the B200's colossal performance improvements mean the chip runs significantly more efficiently than the H100. In Musk's case, trading 100,000 H100s for three times more GPUs that consume even more power is still a net win due to the GPUs' incredible amount of additional AI performance.
It'll be interesting to see when Musk does get his hands on all 300,000 B200 GPUs. If Nvidia's H100 has taught us anything, it's that its AI GPU demand always outstrips actual supply. We will probably see a repeat of 2023, when all the big AI customers, including X, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others, are fighting to grab as many B200s as Nvidia can pump out for at least the next several months.
What this means for your organisation
Efficiency does not cut total power.
The Blackwell B200 offers four times the training performance and 30 times the inference performance of the H100. It uses more power per chip, but runs more efficiently. Buying three times as many GPUs still raises the total draw, and X's H100 cluster already uses 1 Gigawatt. The AI Power Demand Surge trend notes that data centre electricity use jumped 17% in 2025.
Hardware now ages very quickly.
Musk argues that the pace of GPU development makes it not worth keeping 100,000 H100s for long. Leaders should plan for short chip lifespans and treat upgrades as a regular cost. The source compares this race to the CPU wars of the 1990s and 2000s.
Supply will favour the biggest buyers.
The source expects demand for Nvidia's AI GPUs to outstrip supply again, as it did in 2023. X, Meta, Google and Microsoft are all named as buyers. Smaller firms should plan for waits and consider how power delivery design, such as Vertical Power Delivery for AI Chips, fits into their own energy plans.
Three questions for your next leadership meeting
- How much power can our sites supply to the AI hardware we plan to buy?
- How long will new AI chips stay worth running before an upgrade?
- What is our plan if chip supply falls short of demand again?
The trends and technologies behind this story
From the 311 Starburst, the 311 Strategic Intelligence Unit’s map of the technologies and trends shaping the next 50 years.
Analysis by the 311 Strategic Intelligence Unit, from Matthew Griffin’s article and 311 data. First published on Fanatical Futurist.
FAQ
Why does this matter?
As AI models get even bigger and more energy hungry buyers are lining up around the block for Nvidia's latest ultra-powerful GPUs.
About the author
Matthew Griffin Founder, President and Futurist, 311 Institute
Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath."
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Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 17-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder, President and Futurist of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.
An award-winning YouTube creator with over a million followers, with an unrivalled global reach and impact, Matthew is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker, lecturer, and mentor who collaborates with global leaders through the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to shape pivotal initiatives such as the UN’s AI for Humanity programme, the United Nations Conference of the Parties (UN COP), and the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As the former Global Head of Cloud, National Security, and Enterprise Sales for companies including Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, Matthew has a proven track record of building multi-billion dollar business units and turning failing divisions into market leaders. His ability to identify, analyse, and communicate the implications of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends is unparalleled, and his insights are trusted by many of the world’s most respected organisations, including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi, Coca-Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Dow Jones, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, Siemens AG and Siemens Energy, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, Walmart, Workday, Worldpay and many others.
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Sources and further reading
- an X post x.com
Source: first published by the 311 Institute on 30 July 2024. Cite as: Griffin, M. (2024). Elon Musk wants to buy 300,000 Nvidia Blackwells to power new xAI ambitions. 311 Institute. https://www.311institute.com/elon-musk-wants-to-buy-300000-nvidia-blackwells-to-power-new-xai-ambitions/
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