Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla’s AI6 chip will be manufactured at both Samsung’s Taylor facility and TSMC’s Arizona fab. The update from the company’s CEO follows earlier comments in which he described Samsung’s site as technically superior — remarks that had suggested a one-fab strategy for Tesla’s most advanced silicon. That’s no longer the case.
According to Musk, both AI5 and AI6 are being built by Samsung and TSMC, with each foundry producing slightly different physical versions of the same design. “Our software works identically [on both chips],” he wrote, adding that the differences are a result of how each supplier translates designs to physical form.
Samsung has ‘slightly more advanced equipment’
In October, Musk said, rather plainly, that "Technically, the Samsung fab [in Texas] has slightly more advanced equipment than the TSMC fab [in Arizona],” referring to Samsung’s Taylor site and TSMC’s Fab 21 in Phoenix. According to Musk, Samsung’s tooling was slightly more advanced, which led him to suggest that AI5 would be produced there exclusively.
Naturally, that was never the full picture. Tesla had already lined up both Samsung and TSMC to manufacture AI5, and Musk’s own words now confirm it. While Samsung’s Taylor site is newer, TSMC brings proven process maturity and high-volume reliability. Tesla is using both. “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.” Musk posted to X on November 4.
He also confirmed that Tesla’s AI6 chip will follow the same path, adding that it’ll “use the same fabs, but achieve roughly 2X performance.” This puts to rest earlier concerns that AI6 would require a different foundry altogether due to its more aggressive performance targets. Musk’s plan now is to stick with the same two suppliers and to maintain compatibility across both versions before moving to different fabs with the AI7.
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…November 4, 2025
Musk hasn’t detailed how the Samsung and TSMC variants differ at the hardware level, and the company is unlikely to highlight discrepancies unless they become relevant to functionality or deployment. In design terms, it seems like the chips will be tuned to abstract away fab-specific characteristics, enabling a consistent runtime environment for inference.
This isn’t unusual at the scale Tesla is targeting. Dual-sourcing is, after all, a standard practice among companies that need volume guarantees. What was unusual was Musk’s framing, which portrayed Samsung as having a clear lead and TSMC as the fallback. With the confirmation that both fabs are producing Tesla’s silicon, and that both will continue to do so for future generations, that’s clearly not the case.
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