NVIDIA CEO bucks Elon Musk's plans to build chip fab, says what TSMC does is 'extremely hard'

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is enjoying the sights, the food, and the relationships in Taiwan with key suppliers, with a huge focus on TSMC, where he told local reporters that Elon Musk's ambitious plans of building a semiconductor fab isn't easy, and that doing what TSMC does for a living is "extremely hard".

Jensen has been in Taiwan for a few days now, asking TSMC to boost its 3nm process node production by 50% to allocate more silicon for NVIDIA's mega-successful Blackwell GPUs, including the B200 and new B300 "Blackwell Ultra" AI GPUs.

Reporters on the ground in Taiwan asked why Jensen was in Taiwan, to which he replied: "why am I back? Well, business is very strong. So, I came back to encourage my TSMC friends (to work hard)... business is going very, very strong and I'm here to encourage TSMC. They're doing a very good job for us and I'm here to thank them for all the hard work they're doing".

In regards to Elon Musk's recent plans of building his "TeraFab" advanced chip manufacturing facility, Jensen said: "building advanced chip manufacturing is extremely hard. It's not just build the plant, but the engineering, the science and the artistry of doing what TSMC does for a living is extremely hard".

Elon Musk said in relation to his idea of a Tesla TeraFab: "I think we may have to do a Tesla TeraFab. It's like (TSMC's) GigaFab, but way bigger". He continued: "Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it is still not enough. So, I think we may have to do a Tesla TeraFab. It is like [TSMC's] Giga[fab] but way bigger. I cannot see any other way to get to the volume of chips that we are looking for, so I think we are probably going to have to build a gigantic chip fab. It's gotta be done".