Vietnamese PhD holder joins xAI to develop Grok 3

Dr. Pham Hy Hieu, a member of xAI's Grok 3 development team, recently shared his experiences working on what Elon Musk describes as the "smartest AI on Earth." In a Facebook post on February 18, Dr. Hieu, 33, reflected on the intense months leading up to Grok 3's launch, highlighting the

and sacrifices made by the team and their families.

After signing with xAI in July 2024, Dr. Hieu was immediately

the company's . Even before his official start date, he was tasked with addressing a complex issue: the in the Colossus supercomputer. With over 100,000 GPUs operating , energy consumption fluctuations risked damaging the power turbines. Dr. Hieu developed a GPU to mitigate these oscillations, though it increased overall energy consumption. Elon Musk later introduced Tesla's Megapack batteries as , showcasing his innovative problem-solving approach.

Before joining xAI, Dr. Hieu had an impressive academic and professional background. In 2011, he received full scholarships from five

U.S. universities and graduated from Stanford University in 2015. He chose to work at Google, contributing to neural network applications at Google Brain. By 2021, he earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, publishing six scientific papers and significantly advancing AI research.