Elon Musk plans AI chips in partnership with Intel
The EV-maker shared his thoughts on potential manufacturing while addressing the company’s shareholders in the annual meeting
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stated that the company will build a gigantic chip fab to make artificial intelligence (AI) chips and it could associate with Intel to make this happen.
Addressing the Tesla shareholders, Musk gushed, “You know, maybe we’ll do something with Intel. We haven’t signed any deal, but it’s probably worth having discussions with Intel.”
The electronic vehicle (EV) maker is designing its fifth-generation AI chip to power its autonomous ambitions.
While the struggling U.S. chipmaker Intel has chipmaking factories, it has lagged behind Nvidia in the AI chip race.
Recently, the U.S. government took a 10 percent stake in Intel, which requires an external customer for its new manufacturing technology.
With the announcement, Musk triumphed, as shareholders approved a $1 trillion pay package over the next decade. They endorsed his vision of transforming the firm towards an AI and robotics path.
Earlier, Musk had a brush with the AI5 chip. He reiterated that Tesla, currently on its fourth-generation chip, was also partnering with Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. AI chips power Tesla’s autonomous driving systems, including the Full Self-Driving software.
Thus, while few AI5 units would be produced in 2026, they will have high-volume production a year later.
The CEO apprised that AI6 would use the same fabs but achieve roughly twice the performance with volume production in mid-2028.
He added, “Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it’s still not enough. So, I think we may have to do a Tesla terafab. It’s like giga but way bigger. I can’t see any other way to get to the volume of chips that we’re looking for. We will probably have to build a gigantic chip fab.”
Often conversing about his company’s vision theoretically, Musk did not provide details of how the fab would be built. However, he said that the firm would make at least 100,000 wafer starts (the measurement of the output of a semiconductor wafer plant) per month.
The EV-maker expressed that the chip would be inexpensive, power-efficient and optimized for Tesla’s software.
Stating, “I’m super hardcore on chips right now, as you may be able to tell. I have chips on the brain,” Musk added that the chip would probably consume about a third of the power used by Nvidia’s flagship Blackwell chip, at 10 percent of the cost.