Elon Musk has tipped Google as the most likely current frontrunner in the global race to dominate artificial intelligence, crediting the tech giant’s unmatched computing power and vast data assets, even as his own AI venture, xAI, ramps up its ambitions.
In a post on X replying to a discussion on AI competition, Musk wrote that “for the foreseeable future, the major AI companies will continue to prosper, as will xAI. There is just so much to do!”
He went on to say that “outside of real-world AI, Google has the biggest compute (and data) advantage for now, so currently has the highest probability of being the leader,” adding that “that may change in a few years.”
The comments come as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced it will spend an additional $9 billion in Oklahoma over the next two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure, an investment Musk’s remarks suggest could further entrench Google’s advantage.
Google’s $9 billion Oklahoma push
The $9 billion program will fund the construction of a new data center campus in Stillwater and the expansion of Google’s existing Pryor facility, significantly boosting its AI and cloud capacity in the US.
Google noted that part of the spending had been included in its previously announced 2025 capital expenditure plan, while the rest represents new commitments. Last month, Alphabet raised its annual capital spending forecast to about $85 billion from $75 billion, with indications that more increases are likely to occur in the future.
Alongside the Oklahoma expansion, Google has pledged $1 billion to AI education and training for US universities and non-profits. The initiative mirrors similar education-driven investments from rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Amazon.
The investment wave has been partly fueled by the Trump administration’s push for onshoring strategic technologies. Other major announcements include Apple’s $600 billion US investment plan and large-scale AI infrastructure projects by Micron, Nvidia and CoreWeave.
Musk’s rare praise for a rival
Musk’s acknowledgement of Google’s position is unusual in a sector where he has often been openly critical of competitors, particularly OpenAI , which he co-founded in 2015 but later left amid disagreements over its direction.
Since launching xAI in 2023, Musk has positioned it as a challenger to both Silicon Valley rivals and Chinese AI developers, recently unveiling its Colossus supercomputer project to support advanced model training.
While Musk made clear that he believes leadership in AI could shift over time, his public recognition of Google’s current lead speaks to the importance of computational scale and data resources in the industry’s hierarchy.
Google’s advantage stems not only from its global network of data centers and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units) but also from decades of accumulated search, mapping, and user data.
Implications for the AI race
Google’s Oklahoma investment signals a determination to consolidate its leadership position just as competition intensifies.
While Musk’s xAI is gaining traction and users thanks to its push on Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter), industry observers say its path to parity will require securing comparable compute capacity and data access.
The AI sector’s leading players, Google, Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and xAI, are all pursuing aggressive expansion strategies, with global cloud capacity and specialized AI hardware seen as major bottlenecks.
Musk’s remark that “there is just so much to do” may also be him joining the ongoing consensus that AI development is still in its early stages.
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