Musk frames AI scaling as gated by physical capacity — lithography/chip making and, upstream of that, electricity generation — rather than by algorithmic progress, and predicts the compute constraint is resolved 'within 2 to 3 years'. The same material cites China's electricity output exceeding that of the US, Europe, and India combined, implying power is a first-class input to the AI scaling curve.
If the binding constraint on model capability is fab throughput and generation capacity rather than model architecture, then roadmap planning, GPU procurement, and agent-scale cost modeling must be tied to power and silicon supply curves, not just to expected model releases.
Capacity planning for AI systems should track energy and semiconductor supply as primary inputs; algorithm-side optimizations have diminishing returns once a hard physical input is saturated.
China will likely address compute constraints (lithography and chip making) faster than most expect, within 2 to 3 years.
China's electricity output recently surpassed that of the US, Europe, and India combined.