XAI Colossus 2 First Gigawatt AI Data Center

A sharp reminder that natural gas based turbines can be rolled out quick, which hardly describes all power alternatives.  so long as we can drill out lots of gas, this is a viable option and certainly a fix for spiraling demand.

It is also why significant AI is locating to Quebec which has massive built hydro power ar in exess of export markets to the USA.

The only build that could compete, and even that must take half a decade, would be an atmospheric stack, and I would have to build it before anyone believed it possible.  Their real advantage is that power increase exponentially as size increases.

XAI Colossus 2 First Gigawatt AI Data Center

September 22, 2025 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/09/xai-colossus-2-first-gigawatt-ai-data-center.html

XAI Colossus 2’s is targeting ~1 Gigwatt as soon as possible. They have natural gas turbines for primary generation, batteries for stability, and grid for long-term scalability.

XAI Colossus 2 has power from seven installed SMT-360/Titan-350 Natural Gas Turbines. The seven turbines in question are deployed at the Southaven, Mississippi site 6 miles from Colossus 2’s core Memphis facility and were acquired in late July/early August 2025. SemiAnalysis and Patel report the Titan-350 models from Solar Turbines (a Caterpillar subsidiary) were chosen for their mobile, high-efficiency design (up to 40% thermal efficiency) and rapid deployment (weeks vs. months for grid upgrades). Each Titan-350 can generate 35-38 Megawatts of power.

This power Colossus 2 via medium-voltage (MV) interconnect lines, providing primary baseload power for ~110,000 NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 GPUs (targeting 1.1 PFlops FP8 compute).

xAI’s joint venture (JV) with Solaris Energy Infrastructure (50.1% Solaris, 49.9% xAI) has already deployed $112 million in Q2 2025 CapEx for turbines, with Q4 2025-Q1 2026 ramping to enable over 1.1 GW total by Q2 2027 (and options for 1.5+ GW). This is fueled by temporary permitting loopholes (e.g., 12-month approvals without full environmental review) and land acquisitions like the former Duke Energy plant in Southaven.

The mobile turbines can reach 1.1 gigawatts with about 30+ Titan-350 turbines.

Grid Power (Substation) for 300 MW in 45-90 days

There is current minimal power (~0.5 MW initial from Memphis Light, Gas & Water/MLGW), as turbines handle 90%+ load. No full tie-in yet due to TVA delays.

A second dedicated substation (150-300 MW) is under construction and is directly funded by xAI ($50M+ upfront).

They target getting it online by October 2025, relegating turbines to peaker/backup.

The status is the foundations are complete and energization is imminent (60-90 days from September permits). Patel notes xAI’s direct funding (paying TVA $50M+) model accelerates this 2-3x faster than hyperscalers like Meta.

Dylan Patel, SemiAnalysis warns of over $10 Billion of capital spending is needed total CapEx.

Tesla Megapacks will provide power backup and resilience for outages, demand-response, and turbine ramping. they can provide 4 hours of power. They are planing to deploy 200 megapack for about 1 gigawatt hour of buffering.

There is ~150-200 MWh of megapacks deployed at Colossus 2. They will have more batteries than Colossus 1’s 156 units/ ~600 MWh and connecting via MV (medium voltage) lines to Southaven.

Tesla megapack revenue for Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 could combine to hit $500 million.

Musk envisions solar and battery at 100 GW-1 TW scale but near-term it is Megapacks and gas turbines as a bridge.