Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced early Wednesday morning that the company’s next-generation AI5 self-driving chip has officially reached the “tape-out” stage, marking the final step before the design moves to mass production.
Musk took to X to share the milestone, stating, “Congrats to the Tesla AI chip design team on taping out AI5!” He also confirmed that the roadmap is already expanding, adding that “AI6, Dojo3 & other exciting chips” are currently in development.
The AI5 chip, which succeeds the current AI4 hardware, is expected to provide a massive boost in performance for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and its Optimus humanoid robot. Musk has previously claimed the new silicon will be up to 10 times more capable than the current hardware found in Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
Musk also acknowledged the manufacturing partners required to bring the specialized hardware to life. “Thank you to TSMC and Samsung for your support in bringing this chip to production! It will be one of most produced AI chips ever,” Musk wrote.
Industry analysts note that a single AI5 chip is expected to deliver inference performance comparable to an Nvidia H100 GPU, while a dual-chip setup could rival Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture. However, Tesla’s custom silicon is designed to achieve this while fitting inside a vehicle’s glovebox and running on significantly less power.
While the design is now finalized, mass production for the vehicle fleet is not expected until late 2026 or early 2027. In the meantime, Tesla has reportedly begun using a Hardware 4.5 variant in some new models to bridge the gap until the AI5 hardware is ready for a full-scale rollout.
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