Tesla CEO Elon Musk said today that Tesla will likely need to build "a giant fab" to produce artificial intelligence (AI) chips, and publicly expressed the possibility of cooperating with Intel.
Reuters reported that the U.S. electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is designing a fifth-generation AI chip to realize its autonomous driving ambitions. Musk elaborated on possible production plans at the company's annual shareholder meeting.
Musk told cheering Tesla shareholders: "You know, maybe we will do something with Intel." He said: "We haven't signed any agreement yet, but it may be worth discussing with Intel."
Embattled U.S. chipmaker Intel has its own chip factory, but it lags far behind NVIDIA (Nvidia) in the AI chip race. The U.S. government recently acquired a 10% stake in Intel, and Intel needs to find external customers for its latest process technology. Inspired by Musk's relevant remarks, Intel's stock price surged 4% in after-hours trading.
Intel declined to comment.
Musk has previously disclosed information related to AI5 chips and reiterated that Tesla also cooperates with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and South Korea's Samsung. These AI chips specifically power Tesla’s self-driving systems, including Full Self-Driving software. Tesla currently uses 4th generation chips.
Musk said on the social platform X on the 4th that a small amount of AI5 chips will be produced in 2026, and high-scale mass production will not be possible until 2027. He also added that AI6 will be produced in the same wafer factory, but the performance will be approximately doubled, and is expected to reach mass production in mid-2028. He said today: "Even if we extrapolate based on the supplier's best chip production capacity, it is still not enough."
Musk said: "So I think we may have to build a Tesla very large wafer fab (terafab). This is much larger than the Gigafactory. I can't see any other way to achieve the chip production we need, so we may have to build a giant wafer fab, which is inevitable."
Musk often talks about the company's vision in an abstract way, and he did not explain how the fab will be built. However, he said that it can produce at least 100,000 wafer starts per month. He mentioned that this chip is low-cost, energy-saving, and optimized for Tesla’s own software. Musk said the chip consumes about one-third of the power of NVIDIA's flagship Blackwell chip and costs only one-tenth of its manufacturing cost.
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