Tesla Giga Berlin will have a battery cell production facility, and the question just comes down to when. Appropriately enough, when the company finds the help it needs to get the cell production portion of the facility underway, Tesla will start manufacturing batteries. The real shortcoming is the fact that the required talent isn’t available, and high rates of employee turnover could lead to delays in the company’s plans to produce cells in Germany.
Jefferies analyst Philippe Houchois asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Senior VP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering Drew Baglino what issues Tesla may encounter on its journey toward full-scale cell production at the future German plant.
“Will there be the battery capacity consistence with the amount of assembly volume you expect to come out of the — And if not, would you be able to source your battery requirements out of Europe? Or would you have to import batteries from outside Europe to ensure production in Berlin,” Houchois asked the two Tesla execs during the Q2 2020 Earnings Call.
Musk confirmed that Giga Berlin would have cell manufacturing that would handle the production load that comes out of the facility, but Drew Baglino gave more detail on what the delays could be. Hint: It has to do with a lack of available talent.
Baglino mostly added onto Musk’s comment, confirming that a cell production facility would be in Berlin eventually. Still, it depends on when the company can put together a sufficient battery manufacturing team at the new Gigafactory.
“Like the same goes in all areas of cell, supply chain, manufacturing materials, design, we are solving this problem, and we’re treating it like any other problem that we have solved. We will solve this problem, talented people to join us as we solve this problem,” Baglino said.
Once the workers get there, they need to stay. They can’t be in “the garden,” as Musk calls it.
“My biggest concern for getting our talented people is just probably Berlin because the labor mobility in Europe is not as low. I would recommend changing this. Like somebody wants to leave and join another company,” Musk said. “Sometimes they have to spend six months on garden leave. It’s called garden, hanging out in the garden basically, and like this is not a good use of people’s time. I mean, if they want us to hang out on the garden, that’s fine, but they shouldn’t have to.”
Interestingly enough, workers leaving Tesla to join other companies is a relevant issue. Tesla has filed multiple lawsuits, most recently against fellow electric carmaker Rivian, that accused the company of poaching employees. Tesla also has an open case with China-based Xpeng.
But either way, Tesla needs the workforce, and manufacturing jobs for Giga Berlin are of high availability, according to the company’s Career page.
Earlier in the call, Musk and Baglino both talked about the need for manufacturing workers who would be willing to help the company improve production lines.
For a long time, Musk has stated that Tesla is looking for brilliant minds to help revolutionize the way the company manufactures vehicles. The CEO has said that too many smart people end up going into medicine or law, and improvements to manufacturing are needed as well.
Battery cell shortages were inhibiting Tesla from starting projects in other locations. One of those projects was the Tesla Semi, which Elon Musk indicated would begin a “volume production” push later this year.
The issue with producing the Semi beforehand was a shortage of battery cells. But now that the company has openly committed to building the commercial truck at Giga Texas, there is an indication that battery shortages are not an issue any longer.
The cells are there, but the workers are not. Tesla will eventually build these cells in Germany. Still, there needs to be an accommodating team to handle the workload, especially considering half a million vehicles a year will be rolling off the production lines starting in July 2021.
News
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class,” the Nvidia CEO said.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has offered high praise for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system during a Q&A at CES 2026, calling it “world-class” and “state-of-the-art” in design, training, and performance.
More importantly, he also shared some insights about the key differences between FSD and Nvidia’s recently announced Alpamayo system.
Jensen Huang’s praise for Tesla FSD
Nvidia made headlines at CES following its announcement of Alpamayo, which uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of autonomous driving solutions. Due to its focus on AI, many started speculating that Alpamayo would be a direct rival to FSD. This was somewhat addressed by Elon Musk, who predicted that “they will find that it’s easy to get to 99% and then super hard to solve the long tail of the distribution.”
During his Q&A, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked about the difference between FSD and Alpamayo. His response was extensive:
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s world-class not only in the number of miles it’s accumulated, but in the way it’s designed, the way they do training, data collection, curation, synthetic data generation, and all of their simulation technologies.
“Of course, the latest generation is end-to-end Full Self-Driving—meaning it’s one large model trained end to end. And so… Elon’s AD system is, in every way, 100% state-of-the-art. I’m really quite impressed by the technology. I have it, and I drive it in our house, and it works incredibly well,” the Nvidia CEO said.
Nvidia’s platform approach vs Tesla’s integration
Huang also stated that Nvidia’s Alpamayo system was built around a fundamentally different philosophy from Tesla’s. Rather than developing self-driving cars itself, Nvidia supplies the full autonomous technology stack for other companies to use.
“Nvidia doesn’t build self-driving cars. We build the full stack so others can,” Huang said, explaining that Nvidia provides separate systems for training, simulation, and in-vehicle computing, all supported by shared software.
He added that customers can adopt as much or as little of the platform as they need, noting that Nvidia works across the industry, including with Tesla on training systems and companies like Waymo, XPeng, and Nuro on vehicle computing.
“So our system is really quite pervasive because we’re a technology platform provider. That’s the primary difference. There’s no question in our mind that, of the billion cars on the road today, in another 10 years’ time, hundreds of millions of them will have great autonomous capability. This is likely one of the largest, fastest-growing technology industries over the next decade.”
He also emphasized Nvidia’s open approach, saying the company open-sources its models and helps partners train their own systems. “We’re not a self-driving car company. We’re enabling the autonomous industry,” Huang said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, has purchased five additional 380 MW natural gas turbines from South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to power its growing supercomputer clusters.
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI’s turbine deal details
News of xAI’s new turbines was shared on social media platform X, with user @SemiAnalysis_ stating that the turbines were produced by South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility. As noted in an Asian Business Daily report, Doosan Enerbility announced last October that it signed a contract to supply two 380 MW gas turbines for a major U.S. tech company. Doosan later noted in December that it secured an order for three more 380 MW gas turbines.
As per the X user, the gas turbines would power an additional 600,000+ GB200 NVL72 equivalent size cluster. This should make xAI’s facilities among the largest in the world. In a reply, Elon Musk confirmed that xAI did purchase the turbines. “True,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
xAI’s ambitions
Recent reports have indicated that xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development. The funding, as per the AI startup, “will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products.”
The company also teased the rollout of its upcoming frontier AI model. “Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote in a post on its website.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
A $20 billion Series E round
As noted by the artificial intelligence startup in its post, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others.
Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
As xAI stated, “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI’s core mission: Understanding the Universe.”
xAI’s core mission
Th Series E funding builds on xAI’s previous rounds, powering Grok advancements and massive compute expansions like the Memphis supercluster. The upsized demand reflects growing recognition of xAI’s potential in frontier AI.
xAI also highlighted several of its breakthroughs in 2025, from the buildout of Colossus I and II, which ended with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents, and the rollout of the Grok 4 Series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine, among others. The company also confirmed that work is already underway to train the flagship large language model’s next iteration, Grok 5.
“Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
