Elon Musk is setting high expectations for Tesla AI5 and AI6 chips

Tesla’s AI5 and AI6 Chips: A New Era in In-House Silicon

Elon Musk has set very high hopes for Tesla’s upcoming AI chips, AI5 and AI6. These chips are central to Tesla’s future in AI and robotics.

Tesla just completed the design review for AI5. It will be built first by TSMC in Taiwan and later scaled up in Arizona. Musk explained that Tesla has shifted from developing two separate chip architectures to focusing on a single, powerful design. This focus allows all its chip talent to work on one exceptional product.

Just had a great design review today with the Tesla AI5 chip design team! This is going to be an epic chip.

And AI6 to follow has a shot at being the best by AI chip by far.

Switching from doing 2 chip architectures to 1 means all our silicon talent is focused on making 1…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2025

Performance Expectations

Musk described AI5 as an "epic chip." He believes it will likely become the best inference chip for AI models under approximately 250 billion parameters. It promises to deliver unmatched cost efficiency and performance per watt. He added that AI6, the chip to follow, “has a shot at being the best AI chip by far”.

The best AI chip for cars, you mean?

— Ali Sherief (@Zenul_Abidin) September 6, 2025

Chips for Vehicles, Robots, and AI Infrastructure

These chips are crucial for Tesla’s high-volume products like Optimus (the humanoid robot) and Cybercab. AI5 will also serve as the main inference chip onboard vehicles, while AI6 is expected to handle both inference and model training. Musk hinted that AI6 could effectively replace Tesla’s previous Dojo supercomputing platform.

Production Partners and Strategy Shift

Tesla has a $16.5 billion, nine-year deal with Samsung to manufacture AI6 chips at its Texas factory, run from 2025 to 2034. Musk has said he will personally oversee operations there to help accelerate progress. At the same time, AI5 is set to be fabricated by TSMC, starting in Taiwan and later in Arizona.

Why Tesla Shifted from Dojo

Tesla recently shut down the Dojo supercomputer project and disbanded its team. Musk explained the company will instead concentrate on the new AI5 and AI6 chips, which can handle both inference and training tasks. He said it no longer made sense to split resources across multiple chip architectures.

Tesla’s focus on these next-generation chips shows its determination to lead the AI hardware world. If AI5 and AI6 succeed, they could redefine Tesla’s self-driving systems, robotics, and AI infrastructure across the industry.