In his latest Moonshots podcast interview, Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued a startling warning about the current state of the global AI race, arguing that the future battlefield of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will not be a vibrant free-for-all, but will quickly converge into a three-way competition. These three "finalists" in his eyes are: his own xAI, search giant Google, and the "Chinese national team," which has poured its entire national resources into developing AI.
It's worth noting that the OpenAI-Microsoft alliance, currently considered the leader, is not on his "final three" list. However, based on Elon Musk's previous interactions with OpenAI CEO...Online debates and other situationsNaturally, OpenAI would be excluded from related comments.
"They ran around us": On China's execution capabilities and its power advantage
During the two-hour conversation, Elon Musk made no secret of his amazement at China's execution capabilities in the field of AI.
He described the race as a "supersonic tsunami," and said that China is currently "doing an excellent job" in terms of basic computing power deployment, "it's practically running circles around us." He believes that China is adopting a "national system" strategy, highly focusing the country's goals on AI development, a level of focus that Western companies can hardly match.
The key to victory: power and chips
Elon Musk emphasized that the essence of the computing power race is, in essence, a battle between "electricity" and "chips".
• Power shortage:AI training requires astronomical amounts of electricity. Elon Musk boldly predicts that by 2026 (which is this year), China's electricity output will be three times that of the United States. This provides the strongest support for his hyperscale data centers.
• Green energy layout:China is far ahead in the development of renewable energy sources such as solar power, which also solves the energy bottleneck that is currently the most troublesome issue for AI development.
Why these three?
According to Elon Musk:
• xAI:Possesses the strongest hardware integration capabilities (Tesla, X Data) and a pursuit of the truth about AGI.
• Google:It possesses profound technological expertise and the world's most advanced computing infrastructure.
• China National Team:It possesses national-level resource allocation capabilities and a vast advantage in data and electricity.
Analysis of viewpoints
Elon Musk's view, besides boosting the momentum of his own Grok (xAI), also points out a harsh reality after AI development has entered a deep phase: "Computing power equals national power."
In the past, when we looked at AI competition, we focused on whose model had the largest parameters and whose algorithm was the most powerful. But by 2026, the deciding factor has shifted to "infrastructure." When training a model requires the electricity consumption of an entire city, whoever can build more power plants and obtain electricity more cheaply will be qualified to play this game.
Elon Musk's deliberate omission of OpenAI may be partly due to personal grudges, but it also reflects his belief that "pure software companies" may face bottlenecks in the future. In contrast, Google has its own chip development and data centers, xAI has Tesla's energy and hardware support, while China directly uses state power to solve its infrastructure problems.
What does this prediction mean for Taiwan's supply chain? Simply put, regardless of which power emerges victorious, they will all require more powerful chips, more energy-efficient servers, and more efficient cooling solutions. In this "Three Kingdoms" battle, Taiwan's supply chain remains the most important arms supplier behind the scenes.
