Courtesy of Tesla, Inc.
Tesla has inked a $16.5 billion USD agreement with Samsung to produce its next-generation Artificial Intelligence 6 (AI6) chip at the South Korean tech giant’s new semiconductor fab in Taylor, Texas.
The news was confirmed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday. “Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip,” Musk said in a post on X. “The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate.”
According to Musk, the $16.5 billion figure represents only a baseline investment — with the actual output and long-term value of the deal likely to be “several times higher.”
The new chip will mark a major leap forward for Tesla’s hardware capabilities, unifying compute platforms across its vehicles, Optimus humanoid robots, and data centers. Tesla’s AI6 builds on the company’s in-house Dojo chip architecture and is expected to power Full Self-Driving (FSD), robotics, and AI training workloads at unprecedented scale.
Currently, new Tesla EVs are equipped with the AI4 chip, manufactured by Samsung, which serves as the backbone for the company’s FSD (Supervised) software and other autonomous driving functions. The upcoming AI5 chip — which just completed the design phase — will be produced by TSMC, initially in Taiwan and later at the company’s Arizona fab. AI6, however, represents a consolidation of Tesla’s computing roadmap, taking the best of Dojo and earlier chips to enable next-gen AI capabilities.
As part of the new deal, Samsung has also agreed to let Tesla collaborate closely on manufacturing efficiency. Musk noted that he will personally visit the fab — conveniently located not far from his home — to help “accelerate the pace of progress.”
The strategic implications of this move are massive, as Tesla further tightens its grip on vertical integration in AI and chip design — key components of its long-term vision for autonomy and robotics.
