Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most disastrous natural hazards and can cause enormous socio-economic losses every year. TC rapid intensification (RI) is defined as a significant increase in TC intensity over a short period of time and is often associated with the most destructive major TCs. TC RI involves internal dynamical processes and multiscale oceanic and atmospheric environmental conditions, and understanding these processes is important for simulating and projecting TC activity and guiding mitigations of TC-induced damages. Here we examine the TC RI occurrences and rates in two high-resolution “TC-permitting” Earth System Models -- E3SM and CESM. We investigate the connections of TC RI to the large-scale environmental controls, particularly the tropical ocean thermal states and the influence of ENSO. We found that the two models have distinct TC RI features –E3SM simulates far less RI occurrences but has higher average RI rates than CESM. The differences are closely connected to the mean state tropical SST, upper ocean heat content and vertical wind shear.