Tesla is advancing a major manufacturing effort aimed at securing the Artificial Intelligence chips needed for its autonomous driving plans. Elon Musk said on Saturday that the company’s Terafab project to make artificial intelligence chips will launch in seven days. The initiative builds on his earlier view that Tesla would probably need to build “a gigantic chip fab” to meet demand for its in-house processors.
Tesla is designing its fifth-generation Artificial Intelligence chip to support its autonomous ambitions, with the chips powering systems including Full Self-Driving software. Musk had said at the company’s annual meeting last year that the automaker could work with Intel and suggested the company might pursue some form of collaboration. He also said Tesla had not signed any deal, but that discussions with Intel were probably worth having.
Musk also reiterated that Tesla was partnering with Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. The push reflects Tesla’s concern that existing supply arrangements will not deliver enough capacity for the scale of chips it expects to need. “Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it’s still not enough,” Musk said last year, at Tesla’s AGM.
Musk framed the project as a response to a looming supply bottleneck in the chips required for Tesla’s vehicle and software strategy. “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. So I think we’re probably going to have to build a gigantic chip fab. It’s got to be done,” he said. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request seeking more details about the project.
