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Nathan Lane / Bloomberg
It took Elon Musk about a week to decide to build a new supercomputer for his AI startup, xAI, in Memphis, locals say. After several days of frantic negotiations in March, Musk and his team, which included representatives from several of his companies, chose the Tennessee city because of its ample power supply and the potential for quick construction, said Ted Townsend, president of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, an economic-growth nonprofit that worked on the deal.
“We’re going to make a big splash in Memphis,” Townsend recalls Musk saying about the project. xAI contractors are calling it “Project Colossus,” the same name as the 1970 film about an out-of-control AI put in charge of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. “Colossus: Sees all. Senses all. Knows all. Controls all weapons and defenses. When this emotionless creation becomes human master, the results are dire.” The multibillion-dollar investment, which Townsend estimates, was officially announced last month.
But several Memphis City Council members have called on the city to put the brakes on the effort amid growing community concerns about the deal’s secrecy and the data center’s electricity and water usage requirements. Council members argued in a public session earlier this month that they were excluded from the decision-making process, which was negotiated under non-disclosure agreements by Musk’s team, the Chamber of Commerce, local utilities and contractors, months before details of the data center were presented.
Big Lead
The body frame of VinFast’s VF 5 model at the company’s factory in Hai Phong, Vietnam.
Linh Pham/Bloomberg
Vietnamese billionaire’s VinFast postpones US EV factory construction amid headwinds
VinFast Auto, run by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong, said it would delay construction of an electric car factory in the United States by three years amid growing economic headwinds.
“Taking full account of the reality of market volatility and potential challenges, we have adopted a more cautious outlook that is carefully adjusted to short-term headwinds,” VinFast Chairman Thuy Le said in a statement.
VinFast said its planned EV factory in North Carolina will start commercial production in 2028, instead of 2025 as previously announced. The company had planned to invest $1.4 billion in the first phase of its US factory, but also plans to build factories in India and Indonesia.
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Hot Topics
Graphite CEO Barclay Rogers
Graphite
Graphite Founder and CEO Barclay Rogers on Biomass-Based Carbon Removal Solutions
There are many different technologies for carbon removal. What are the advantages of biomass-based solutions?
I looked at the data, and as you can see, biomass-based solutions dominate volume-wise. This is interesting to me because this is not the story people are talking about. They’re talking about direct air capture. But biomass-based approaches are getting to market faster. I call this the dark horse story. If you think of it like a horse race, we thought there was a clear winner, but now there’s a horse that no one thought would run that’s running really hard.
Why is biomass increasing?
The hardest part is separating the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which requires a lot of thermodynamic work. With a biomass-based approach, you can do that for free, which means the costs are much lower.
What does Graphyte do?
The Pine Bluff, Arkansas project is one of the largest projects, with a capacity of 15,000 tons of CO2 removal per year. Construction is expected to begin in early 2025, with an additional 50,000 tons of removal capacity, bringing the total to 65,000 tons by the end of 2025. The company was founded in February 2023 with initial investment from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates’ climate-focused investment fund, and 14 months after founding, the 15,000 tons per year facility was operational.
How long will it take?
Our selling price is $100 per ton. That’s the goal that everyone wants to reach someday. We’re there now.
How does it work?
We call this carbon casting. The problem is that the carbon captured by biomass is released into the atmosphere, mainly due to decomposition. Trees fall in the forest, rot, and the carbon contained in them is released into the atmosphere. We take the residues from agriculture and the timber industry, which become raw materials. Think about growing rice. The husks and chaff around the grains, the straw left in the fields, usually decompose. We can take these products and use them as raw materials.
We take the biomass material and crush it to reduce particle size. We then compress it to a certain moisture content, compress it into blocks, and encase the blocks in a long-lasting waterproof barrier. The key is to keep it dry. We basically seal the biomass in bags and make sure it stays dry for over 1,000 years. We bury the biomass in the ground and put soil back on top of it.
Is it difficult to get local residents to agree to burying this biomass deposit underground?
The process is very land efficient. It stores the equivalent of 40,000 tons of CO2 per acre of land. The working area of the storage facility in Grant County, Arkansas, is about 40 acres. 40 acres is not a lot in rural areas.
Who are your customers?
We have one publicly disclosed customer and quite a few more that are not yet publicly disclosed, but that will change in the second half of the year. The publicly disclosed customer is American Airlines. They’re interested in durable carbon removal, but all of the solutions were out of reach for them. They saw the price of $100 per ton and said we can do that.
How many customers do you have in total?
More than 10.
So what does that mean in terms of carbon removal capacity?
The company plans to increase its removal capacity from 15,000 tonnes per year to 5 million tonnes by 2030.
Is that realistic?
Yes, absolutely. Biomass is abundant, the technology works today, there are projects in development, all that’s needed are customers willing to pay for it.
You’d need to build several factories. Each factory would start at 50,000 tons per year and be able to scale to 500,000 tons. So to get back to that 5 million tons figure, you’d need 10 projects. One of the advantages of carbon casting is that it’s relatively capital efficient. You don’t need to raise $1 billion to build a factory. You can build a factory for just a little over $10 million.
What else am I reading?
Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has grown his disdain for clean energy as Ohio embraces it.
Sam Altman’s $3.7 billion nuclear fusion startup baffles scientists
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California’s power grid passed a reliability test during the heatwave, and it’s all thanks to giant batteries
UN Climate Chief Calls for Action After Hurricane Destroys Grandmother’s Home
‘We’re living in a nightmare’: Inside Texas’ Bitcoin Town health crisis
Wall Street wants to jump on the US battery boom
Extreme heat causes billions of dollars in damages that insurers cannot cover
Rooftop solar was gaining popularity in Texas even before Beryl came along, so what’s happening now?
California’s EV sales growth has plummeted, with once-popular Tesla taking a big hit
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