# Getting a gigawatt online required solving several supply bottlenecks

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/getting-a-gigawatt-online-required-solving-several-supply/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Elon Musk](https://realalpha.app/builders/elon-musk/) · Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and executive.
- Host: [Dwarkesh Patel](https://realalpha.app/people/dwarkesh-patel/) · Host, Dwarkesh Podcast · Co-wrote The Scaling Era, an oral history of AI; named to TIME100 AI.
- Show: Dwarkesh Podcast
- Episode: [Elon Musk – "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/), Feb 5, 2026
- Moment: 9:00 to 15:09 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/getting-a-gigawatt-online-required-solving-several-supply/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=540

## Quote

> “So, like, the number of sort of **miracles in series** that the XAI team had to accomplish in order to get a gigawatt of power online was crazy.”
> — [Elon Musk](https://realalpha.app/builders/elon-musk/) at [9:09](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=549) · Dwarkesh Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Cooling, networking and maintenance add to chips’ power requirements.
2. Three global casting firms make the turbine vanes and blades.
3. Permits and tariffs also slowed plans to scale solar.

## About this segment

Elon Musk describes how xAI assembled a gigawatt, including permitting hurdles, cooling overhead and turbine-blade shortages. The story shows why AI power depends on industrial supply chains as well as generation.

From “Elon Musk – "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space””, Feb 5, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[9:04](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=544) If the point is you won't be able to scale on the ground, it's just, you just won't. People are going to hit the wall big time on power generation. They already are. So, like, the number of sort of miracles in series that the XAI team had to accomplish in order to get a gigawatt of power online was crazy. We had to gang together a whole bunch of turbines. And then we had permit issues in Tennessee and had to go across the border to Mississippi, which is fortunately only a few miles away.

[9:37](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=577) But then we still had to run the high power lines a few miles and build a power plant in Mississippi. And it was very difficult to build that. and people don't understand like how much how much electricity do you actually need at the generator level at the generation level in order to power a data center because they look at the the the news will look at the the power consumption of uh say a gb 300 and and multiply that by a thing and then think that's the amount of power you need all the cooling and everything wake up yeah this is like that's a that's a that's a total noob you've never done any hardware in life before besides the gb300 you've got to power all of the networking hardware um there's a whole bunch of cpu and storage stuff that's happening uh you've got a size for uh your your peak uh

[10:25](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=625) cooling requirements so that means can you cool even on the worst hours the worst day of the year well it's pretty freaking hot in memphis so so you're going to have like a 40 increase on your power just for cooling, assuming you don't want your data center to turn off on hot days and want it to keep going, then you've got to say, well, there's another multiplicative element on top of that, which is, are you assuming that you never have any hiccups in your power generation?

[10:56](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=656) Like, oh, well, actually, sometimes you have to take the generators, some of the power offline in order to service it. Oh, OK, now you add another 20%, 25% multiplier on that, because you've got to assume that that you've got to take power offline to service it. So the actual RS, roughly every 110,000 GBs, GB300s, inclusive of networking, CPU storage, cooling, margin for servicing power is roughly 300 megawatts.

[11:31](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=691) Sorry, say that again. It's roughly, or think about it, Like, the way you think about it is like 330,000 to actually, what you need at the generation level to service, probably service 330,000 GB300s, including all of the associated support networking and everything else, and the peak cooling, and to have some margin, some power margin reserve, is roughly a gigawatt. Can I ask a very naive question?

[11:59](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=719) Yeah. Um, uh, you know, you're describing the engineering details of doing this stuff on Earth. Um, but then there's analogous engineering difficulties of doing it in space. How do you do the, um, uh, how do you replace infinite band with orbital lasers, et cetera, et cetera. How do you make it resistant to radiation? Um, I don't know the details of the engineering, but fundamentally, what is the reason to think those challenges, which have never been, had to be addressed before will end up being easier than just like building more turbines on Earth.

[12:30](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=750) There's companies that build turbines on Earth. They can make more turbines, right? I invite, again, try doing it and then you'll see. So like the turbines are sold out through 2030. Have you guys considered making your own? I think in order to bring enough power online, I think SpaceX and Tesla will probably have to make the turbine blades, the vanes and blades, internally. But just the blades or the turbines?

[13:05](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=785) The limiting factor, you can get everything except the blades, called the blades and vanes. You can get that 12 to 18 months before the vanes and blades, the limiting factor of the vanes and blades. And there are only three casting companies in the world that make these. And they're massively backlogged. Is this Siemens, GE, those guys, or is it a subcontractor? No, it's other companies. I mean, sometimes they have a little bit of casting capability in-house.

[13:35](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=815) But I'm just saying you can just call any of the turbine makers, and they will tell you. It's not top secret. It's probably on the internet right now. If it wasn't for the tariffs, would Colossus be solar-powered? It would be much easier to make it solar-powered, yeah. The tariffs are nuts, so several hundred percent. So... Don't you know some people? We also need speed. Yeah, no, you know, the president has us, you know, we don't agree on everything.

[14:05](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=845) And this administration is not the biggest fan of solar. um but it's and we also need the land the permits and everything so if you're trying to move very fast um like i do think scaling solar on earth it is a is a good way to go yeah but but you need you do need some amount of time to find the land get the permits get the solar uh pair that with the batteries but why would it not work to stand up your own solar production and then you're right that you eventually run out of land, but there's a lot of land here in Texas. There's a lot of land in Nevada, including private land. It's not all publicly owned land. And so you'd be able to at least get the next Colossus and the next one after that. And at a certain point, you hit a wall, but wouldn't that work for the moment? As I said, we are scaling solar production.

[14:56](https://realalpha.app/v/BYXbuik3dgA/?t=896) There's a rate at which you can scale physical production of solar cells. We're going as fast as possible in scaling domestic production.