Elon Musk’s Texas Tesla Gigafactory is expanding to contain an AI supercomputer cluster, and Supermicro’s CEO is a big fan of the cooling solution. Charles Liang, founder and CEO of Supermicro, took to X (formerly Twitter) to celebrate Musk’s use of Supermicro’s liquid cooling technology for both Tesla’s new cluster and xAI’s similar supercomputer, which is also on the way.
Pictured together among server racks, Liang and Musk are looking to “lead the liquid cooling technology to large AI data centers.” Liang estimates the impact of Musk leading the move to liquid cooling AI data centers “may lead to preserving 20 billion trees for our planet,” obviously referring to the improvements that could be had if liquid cooling were adopted at all data centers worldwide.AI data centers are well known for their massive power draws, and Supermicro hopes to reduce this strain by pushing liquid cooling. The company claims direct liquid cooling may offer up to an 89% reduction in electricity costs of cooling infrastructure compared to air cooling.
Thanks @elonmusk for leading the liquid cooling technology to large AI data centers! This may lead to preserving 20 billion trees for our planet❤️ pic.twitter.com/oJ48Dw3YVFJuly 2, 2024
Ina previous Tweet, Liang clarified that Supermicro’s goal is “to boost DLC [direct liquid cooling] adoption from <1% to 30%+ in a year.” Musk is deploying Supermicro’s cooling at a major scale for his Tesla Gigafactory supercomputer cluster. The new expansion to the existing Gigafactory will house 50,000 Nvidia GPUs and more Tesla AI hardware to train Tesla’s Full Self Driving feature.
The expansion is turning heads thanks to the supermassive fans under construction to chill the liquid cooling, which Musk also recently highlighted in an X post of his own (expand tweet below). Musk estimates the Gigafactory supercomputer will draw 130 megawatts on deployment, with growth up to 500MW expected after Tesla’s proprietary AI hardware is also installed. Musk claims that the facility’s construction is nearly complete, and it is planned to be ready for deployment in the next few months.
Sizing for ~130MW of power & cooling this year, but will increase to >500MW over next 18 months or so. Aiming for about half Tesla AI hardware, half Nvidia/other.Play to win or don’t play at all.July 07, 2025
Also expected to be ready “within a few months,” the xAI supercomputer will also be liquid-cooled by Supermicro and already has a planned upgrade path to300,000 Nvidia B200 GPUs next summer. According to recent reports, getting the xAI cluster online is a slightly greater priority for Musk than Tesla, as Musk reportedly ordered Nvidia to shipthousands of GPUs originally ordered for Tesla to X insteadin June. The move was reported to have delayed Tesla’s supercomputer cluster’s construction by months, but like so much Musk-centric news, exaggeration is highly likely.
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Sunny Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom’s. From APUs to RGB, Sunny has a handle on all the latest tech news.
