Musk’s Tesla looks at Chinese AI models even as Trump insists on American dominance

Elon Musk’s Tesla is now training artificial intelligence models inside China, even while Donald Trump is on TV saying America is crushing the Chinese in the race to dominate AI. A Chinese news outlet, Cailianshe, broke the story on Friday.

They said Tesla’s training center in China is focused on building AI for local use and for assisted driving features. The source for that report was Tao Lin, one of the company’s vice presidents.

While all this is going on, Tesla’s staff have also been crawling all over China’s solar supply chain. They’re inspecting factories, digging into production lines, and trying to get better access to key equipment.

Right now, Tesla’s team hasn’t signed anything yet. They’re still checking out different companies. But SpaceX, Elon’s other company, already signed a deal with a top Chinese manufacturer that makes something called heterojunction equipment.

That gear is used to build high-efficiency solar cells. The supplier wasn’t named, but the contract is already done.

Tesla and SpaceX teams visit solar factories, chase Chinese equipment

The factories they’re visiting make tools that help build a special type of solar cell. These cells work better than the usual kind because they combine different materials. One of those materials is a thin film of amorphous silicon.

The point is to stack that film onto a silicon base to form something called a PN junction. That setup lets the solar cell push out more power. These newer cells can hit conversion rates above 24%. That means more electricity from the same amount of sunlight.

People in the industry said there aren’t many companies in China that can make full lines of this kind of equipment. That’s why the Tesla and SpaceX teams are paying attention. One company already supplies them, and that partnership is still going.

Elon is clearly trying to lock down more deals before those machines become hard to get. The gear isn’t just important for solar power. It’s also linked to energy tech Musk wants to use with AI and data systems. And right now, a lot of it can only be sourced from China.

Trump says America is leading while experts say China is catching up

While Tesla does all this work inside China, Trump is out there saying the U.S. is winning. On January 13, during an interview with Tony Dokoupil on CBS, Trump said, “We’re leading China by a tremendous amount.”

A few days later at Mar-a-Lago, he said again, “The AI is unbelievable, what’s happening there. We’re leading China by a lot.” On January 21 in Davos, he doubled down, saying, “We’re leading the world in AI by a lot. We’re leading China by a lot.”

Trump’s team says America is ahead because of its AI chips. These are the things that run language models, image processing, and other big-data tasks.

But China isn’t sitting still. It has a strong technical workforce and huge amounts of electricity to run data centers. Some experts say China is just a few months behind.

David Sacks, who handles AI and crypto strategy at the White House, said in June, “Chinese models are three to six months behind.” When asked again on January 21, he said the U.S. is still in front but warned that China has other advantages, especially in power generation.

Matt Sheehan, from the Carnegie Endowment, said once a top U.S. model gets released, a Chinese version usually follows within six to eighteen months. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, said China is just “nanoseconds” behind.

Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, said China trails by about six months.

Elon maintains close ties with both Trump and Jinping. That’s not surprising. Tesla still needs China to keep its factories running, especially now that its electric vehicle sales in China are falling apart. So while Trump talks about beating China, Elon is building with it.

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