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Warnings grow over China's massive electricity expansion, which gives it a decisive edge in the artificial intelligence race. Elon Musk, US engineers, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urge the countries to buckle up.
American engineer Peter H. Diamandis has recently flagged concerns regarding China generating 40% more electricity than the US and the European Union combined.
In a post shared on X, which was reshared by Billionaire Elon Musk, Diamandis said, “China is generating 40% more electricity than the US & EU combined. In the global race where energy = intelligence, we need to start waking up.”
Earlier this week, another American engineer, Rubén Domínguez Ibar, flagged a similar warning. In a social media post, he explained that China keeps scaling electricity generation at a pace unmatched by any other bloc. He further added that US output, as compared to China's, looks flat over the last decade.
Electricity is the real bottleneck behind artificial intelligence (AI), factories, data centres, and re-industrialisation.
These warnings have been previously flagged by Musk and Nvidia's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jensen Huang, who said that the country's world-beating power network can provide a major advantage over the US in the race to dominate AI.
Musk on limiting factors of AI deployment
Speaking to BlackRock Inc CEO at the World Economic Forum on 22 January, Musk said, "The limiting factor for AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power", and added that "very soon, maybe even later this year, we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on, except for China". Musk's xAI is building US data centres. He said that China's growth in electricity is tremendous.
According to a Bloomberg report, data centres in the US will account for nearly 38% of the growth in electricity demand between 2024 and 2030, though just 6% in China. Further, data centres will command nearly 7% of the total US power demand by 2030, compared to China's 2%.
Musk's comments echo sentiments similar to those of Huang, who noted that access to electricity is a potential differentiator between Beijing and Washington.
China dominates electricity generation
According to a Bloomberg report, China, since 2021, has added more power capacity across all energy technologies as compared to Washington has in its history. This includes 543 gigawatts (GW) in 2025, the report said, citing data by the country’s National Energy Administration.
It further added that China is likely to add over 3.4 terawatts of electricity generation capacity over the next five years. It is estimated to be almost six times as much as the US. In 2025, China's electricity consumption, which is a crucial barometer of the country's economic activity, surpassed the 10 trillion kWh-mark for the first time, the National Energy Administration (NEA) announced.
Beijing continues to increasingly add new power capacity with massive deployments of renewable sources like solar and wind, along with coal, nuclear and gas facilities.
AI firm Anthropic warned of US lagging behind China
In May 2025, Silicon Valley-based AI firm Anthropic issued a warning that the United States was falling behind China in electricity generation. The company, which develops the Claude large language models, said the US AI industry would need at least 50 gigawatts of power capacity by 2028 to retain its global lead, calling the gap with China “worrying.”
Anthropic urged Washington to ease regulatory hurdles slowing power-infrastructure projects. Citing a February 2025 report by Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance, it noted that China added about 400 gigawatts of power capacity last year, while the US added only a fraction of that amount, roughly one-tenth of China’s increase.
English (US) ·