When it comes to Elon Musk, the world's richest person is well-known for clean energy initiatives that include bets on electric vehicles, solar power, energy storage and more. These days, Musk is having to turn to fossil fuels to help power his AI ambitions.

Musk Acquires Gas Turbine Company

With growing energy demand needed for the Grok chatbot, which is owned by recently public SpaceX (SPCX  ), Musk made an acquisition move.The world's richest person spent $1 billion to buy APR Energy, a gas turbine company that has a fleet of mobile gas and diesel turbines, according to a report from Electrek.APR Energy totals more than 1 GW of generation capacity. According to the report, the company uses trailer-mounted gas turbines and diesel and natural gas engines that can be installed in days instead of the years it takes to build a traditional power plant.Electrek highlights the quiet nature of the acquisition, which didn't have a press release, but was rather found through a Federal Trade Commission early termination notice. The deal has already cleared.

Ditching Clean Energy

After years of being focused on solar power, electric vehicles and clean energy, the growth of xAI, Grok and other Musk-owned businesses has forced the entrepreneur to turn to fossil fuels.In Memphis, there are gas turbines running the Colossus and Colossus 2 supercomputers for xAI, according to the report. Those supercomputers help power Grok.Tesla quietly dropped "sustainable" from its mission statement late last year.The power crunch fueling the next stages of AI growth is pushing even clean-energy champions like Musk toward the fastest available source - in his case, gas.