What caused the outage at xAI's Grok?

xAI reported that issues with Grok resulted from an outage at its Memphis compute center on Thursday morning. The company apologized to its compute partners.

Did the outages have a common cause?

No. OpenAI attributed its issue to a routing error, and Anthropic did not cite an external source. Major infrastructure providers like Cloudflare, AWS, and Microsoft Azure reported no outages, so a shared third-party cause was not confirmed.

Large Language ModelsAI Business & IndustryWIRED AISep 4, 2026Sep 4, 2026, 10:00 JST

OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI chatbots hit by rare outages

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3 Key Points

What happened
Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI all suffered rare outages on Thursday morning, taking down their chatbots. OpenAI's ChatGPT and Codex were unavailable for some users starting around 7:43 am PT, with a fix in place by about 8:17 am PT. Anthropic reported a partial outage from 6:23 am PT, resolved by 9:16 am PT, while xAI's Grok went down at 6:30 am PT and was restored by 10:05 am PT.
Why it matters
The simultaneous timing initially suggested a shared third-party cause, but neither OpenAI nor Anthropic cited an external source. Notably, Anthropic and xAI announced a compute partnership with SpaceX in May, and SpaceX, xAI's parent, apologized to its compute partners for the Memphis outage. Major infrastructure players like Cloudflare, AWS, and Microsoft Azure reported no issues, leaving the root cause unclear.
What to watch
The test is whether these outages expose a hidden dependency or a shared infrastructure weakness, especially given the SpaceX compute partnership and the apology to impacted partners. Watch whether future incidents are traced to the Memphis compute center.

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Context & Analysis

The simultaneous outages across three major AI providers on Thursday morning are notable because they defy the usual explanation for such events. When multiple services fail at once, the typical culprit is a shared cloud provider or content delivery network, but none of the major infrastructure players reported issues. OpenAI pointed to a routing error, while xAI blamed its own compute center in Memphis. Anthropic remained silent on the root cause. This raises the question of whether these companies' AI models rely on a fragile shared layer that isn't yet visible to outsiders. The fact that Anthropic and xAI had announced a compute partnership with SpaceX in May adds a layer of intrigue, though xAI's apology to its compute partners suggests the issue was on its end. For business users who depend on these chatbots, the outages serve as a reminder that even the most advanced AI services can be unexpectedly interrupted, and the lack of a clear common cause means similar incidents could happen again without warning.

FAQ

What caused the outage at xAI's Grok?: xAI reported that issues with Grok resulted from an outage at its Memphis compute center on Thursday morning. The company apologized to its compute partners.
Did the outages have a common cause?: No. OpenAI attributed its issue to a routing error, and Anthropic did not cite an external source. Major infrastructure providers like Cloudflare, AWS, and Microsoft Azure reported no outages, so a shared third-party cause was not confirmed.

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