The world's richest man is sleeping next to his servers as SpaceXAI scales a massive supercomputer cluster with billion-dollar client contracts
The man worth $917 billion is living in a trailer. Elon Musk revealed Monday that he’s taken up residence in an Airstream in Memphis, parked steps away from SpaceXAI’s sprawling supercomputer complex. He called it his “palace” during a taping of the All-In podcast, where SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell confirmed that yes, Musk is literally sleeping on the factory floor.
The Colossus complex and its billion-dollar tenants #
The facility Musk is hovering over isn’t some modest server farm. The Colossus supercomputer cluster, which began construction in 2024, has scaled to roughly 1 GW of AI compute capacity by mid-2026. The campus now includes multiple facilities: Colossus 1, Colossus 2 (also called Macrohard), Minihard, and several supporting structures, all packed with Nvidia GPUs dedicated to training Grok models and serving external clients.
Those external clients are where the numbers get staggering. Anthropic has reportedly secured a rental agreement for Colossus 1 worth up to $1.25 billion per month. Google has signed a deal for access to approximately 110,000 GPUs at around $920 million monthly, with that arrangement set to begin in October 2026.
The revenue stream helps explain why SpaceX pulled the trigger on acquiring xAI earlier in 2026 in a deal reported at $250 billion. The acquisition led to the rebranding of Musk’s AI operations under the SpaceXAI banner, with the combined entity now positioning itself as a major player in the “neocloud” market, essentially renting out cutting-edge AI compute capacity to companies that need it but can’t build it fast enough themselves.
Power, batteries, and angry neighbors #
Running a gigawatt-scale computing operation requires, predictably, a gigawatt-scale power supply. SpaceXAI’s solution has been blunt: deploy temporary natural gas turbines while permanent infrastructure catches up. At peak, 69 gas turbines were running on-site simultaneously.
AI, tech, and the markets they move—in one daily briefing.
Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy.
That approach has not been popular with the local community. Environmental concerns and permitting disputes have dogged the project, with residents raising questions about air quality and the pace at which the facilities were stood up. SpaceXAI has committed to removing all 69 temporary turbines by July 2027, transitioning to a permanent 1.2 GW gas facility that would operate under the Clean Air Act’s compliance framework.
On the energy storage side, Tesla has deployed approximately 720 Megapack units at the Colossus 2 site, creating what’s being described as the largest grid battery in the United States at roughly 2.8 to 3.3 GWh of capacity. The Tennessee Valley Authority approved the grid connection for this battery installation in August 2026. The cost of that Tesla battery deployment alone ran about $1 billion by mid-2026.
Musk briefly became the world’s first trillionaire for 12 days in June 2026 before his net worth settled back to around $917 billion.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our