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Tesla submits proposal to Indonesia for battery and energy storage project: report

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Reports have emerged that Tesla has submitted an investment proposal to Indonesia for a possible battery facility in the country. The update was shared in a statement to reporters on Friday by Septian Hario Seto, Indonesia’s deputy head for investment and mining coordination. 

Indonesia boasts one of the world’s largest nickel reserves, which happens to be a material that Tesla needs to ramp the production of its 4680 cells. Elon Musk has noted in the past that Tesla is looking to acquire as much nickel as possible and that it would grant a giant contract to any company that could provide the material, provided that the nickel is sourced sustainably. 

Being the world’s largest nickel producer, Indonesia has publicly expressed its intentions to attract Tesla. Interestingly enough, Indonesia stopped nickel shipments last year in an effort to develop a full nickel supply chain within the country, starting from extraction and processing to the production of batteries. Tesla, for its part, appears to have expressed its intent to establish a presence in the country. 

“I received their proposal yesterday morning… next week we will meet them (virtually) to get an official explanation,” Septian said, adding that the proposal goes beyond just Tesla acquiring nickel from Indonesia. “If they only want to buy raw materials, we are not interested,” the official noted, according to Reuters

In his statement to the media, Septian stated that he could not provide details of Tesla’s proposal for now due to a nondisclosure agreement with the electric car maker. He did, however, mention that the focus of Indonesia and Tesla’s discussions so far has been on batteries and energy storage solutions. With this in mind, it appears that if Tesla will establish a Gigafactory in Indonesia, it would be focused on batteries and Tesla Energy products like the Powerwall and Megapack. 

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Back in November, Indonesian President Joko Widodo revealed that he is sending a high-level delegation to meet with the electric car maker’s top executives. The president mentioned that the trip would partly be aimed at promoting Indonesia’s “Omnibus” Job Creation Law, an initiative that harmonizes 79 existing laws. This significantly cuts red tape and allows companies like Tesla to establish a presence in the country without much difficulties. 

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo

“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class,” the Nvidia CEO said.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

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. 

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“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.”

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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.

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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.

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Credit: xAI/X

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.”

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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. 

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Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round

xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website. 

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Credit: xAI

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.”

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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. 

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