Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently confirmed that Tesla will continue its dual-factory strategy. AI6 chips will be produced simultaneously at Samsung's Tyler, Texas, U.S., and TSMC's wafer fab in Arizona, U.S.A. According to Musk, both AI5 and AI6...
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently confirmed that Tesla will continue its dual-factory strategy. AI6 chips will be produced simultaneously at Samsung's Tyler, Texas, U.S., and TSMC's wafer fab in Arizona, U.S.A.
According to Musk, both AI5 and AI6 chips will be manufactured by Samsung and TSMC. Each will produce slightly different physical versions, but the design is the same and the software version is also the same. The only difference lies in the differences in how each wafer factory converts the design into physical chips.
Slightly different versions of the Tesla AI5 chip will be made at TSMC and Samsung simply because they translate designs to physical form differently, but the goal is that our AI software works identically.
We will have samples and maybe a small number of units in 2026, but high…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2025
Musk once said, "From a technical point of view, Samsung's Texas fab equipment is slightly more advanced than TSMC's Arizona fab." He was referring to Samsung's Taylor fab and TSMC's Fab 21 in Phoenix, and revealed in words that the AI5 chip may be produced only by Samsung, but in fact this is not the case.
According to his post on social media
Currently, Musk has not revealed the specific hardware differences between the Samsung and TSMC versions, but he has said that the dual supply model of Samsung and TSMC will continue to be used before AI7 to ensure compatibility between versions. In terms of design, Tesla seems to have adjusted the chip architecture to improve foundry-specific differences and ensure consistency in the inference operating environment.
In addition to confirming the news of dual-factory production, Musk also announced new performance data for the first time. He claims that AI5 will be 40 times more efficient than AI4, instead of 40%. This "40x" improvement is not tied to any specific metric and could refer to computational throughput, latency, energy efficiency, model execution speed, or a weighted combination of these factors.
Musk said that AI5 is still in the development stage and has not yet entered the tape-out process, and is expected to begin mass production in 2026; AI6 is expected to come out a year later, with the goal of doubling performance in the same foundry, so it may enter mass production in 2027 or early 2028. He also revealed that AI7 has entered the early development stage, this generation is "more adventurous", and hinted that a different foundry layout may be required.
Musk confirms Tesla AI5 and AI6 will be made at both Samsung and TSMC, reinforcing dual-foundry strategy Further reading: The United States plans to levy annual fees based on patent value! Industry warning: fear of hollowing out small and medium-sized enterprises and hitting U.S. technology development Motivate employee R&D morale! Samsung triples patent bonus, striving to return to technology dominance
