Tesla could be the next big chipmaker, AI5 to rival NVIDIA's Hopper and Blackwell

After saying Samsung and TSMC cannot meet Tesla's growing demand for new chips, the electric car company has announced the AI5 chip design is in "good shape", and production will begin.

The news comes from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who wrote in an X post that the AI5 chip design is in "good shape" and that Tesla will restart work on the Dojo 3 supercomputer. This announcement comes after Tesla stated a few months ago that it was axing the Dojo supercomputer project following a shortage of hardware, specifically from companies such as NVIDIA.

The decision to shut down Dojo 3 came after key members of the team left Tesla, but now that the project is back online, we can assume the only thing that is needed is compute power.

So, what does this mean for Tesla and custom chips? With Dojo 3 back in the picture, Tesla is likely looking at implementing an AI5-based cluster of chips, which will more than likely spill over to its Optimus humanoid robot fleet, especially considering Musk said that it will be the company's "highest volume" chip.

In a separate X post, Musk explained that solving AI5 was "existential to Tesla" and that it will be a "very capable chip" that's "roughly Hopper class as single SoC and Blackwell as Dual". However, "it costs peanuts and uses much less power."