Tesla Reverses Course on AI5 Memory, Bumps Chip to 96GB

Tesla will ship its next-generation AI5 chip with 96GB of LPDDR5 memory after Elon Musk said Friday that the company nudged the specification higher rather than use the minimum-density version of the memory alone.

The announcement marks a quick reversal from Thursday, when Musk said Tesla had halved AI5 memory to 72GB of LP5 to secure enough volume and lower costs for the Optimus production ramp. That reduction, which also cut AI6 memory to 144GB of LP6, was expected to have what Musk described as a negligible effect on Optimus performance. Thursday’s report covered both cuts in detail.

Musk confirmed the new figure Friday in a reply to a post estimating that each humanoid robot would need about 200GB of RAM, writing that Tesla “decided to nudge AI5 up a little to 96GB, as Tesla would otherwise be the only company using the min RAM version of LP5.” The reply landed less than a day after the original cut was announced.

AI5 is Tesla’s next-generation AI inference chip, which the company has said is nearing completion and could become one of the most widely produced chips in its class. Memory supply has become a gating factor for Tesla’s robotics ambitions, since Musk has predicted that humanoid robots will eventually outnumber people. Tesla has been working to finalize the AI5 design ahead of the planned Optimus ramp, and the memory configuration will shape both cost and availability as production scales.

The revision shows Tesla tuning its hardware around supply-chain reality rather than raw specifications. By moving to 96GB, the company gets a more standard memory configuration that other buyers already use, preserving most of the cost and volume benefits of the original cut without committing Tesla to a unique low-density part.