TECH NEWS – Furthermore, the Trump administration played a significant role in this, as it is doing everything in its power to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.
In April, during a discussion about the design completion of Tesla’s AI5 chip, Elon Musk announced that the upcoming AI6 chip would be manufactured at Samsung’s 2-nanometer (nm) fabrication (fab) facility in Arizona, while the higher-specification (spec) AI6.5 chip would be produced at TSMC’s Arizona fab. Tesla’s AI6 chip is scheduled for a tape out in December, with the AI6.5 to follow a few months later.
Best was working with such a great team of AI hardware & software engineers! It was more fun than going to parties on Saturdays by far.
Least awesome was that we had to make several design concessions to move fast, but were able to finish tapeout 45 days ahead of schedule.
AI6…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Both chips use a large amount of SRAM. Last month, Elon Musk noted that roughly half of the TRIP AI compute accelerators in both chips are dedicated to SRAM. This results in an effective memory bandwidth that is an order of magnitude greater than the DRAM bandwidth for any computation performed in the SRAM cache. The AI6 and AI6.5 chips will both use the new LPDDR6 memory. These two innovations are said to enable the chips to perform twice as well as the AI5 chip while maintaining the same grid size. According to a Weibo leaker, Tesla is considering shifting the AI6.5 chip production from TSMC to Intel due to pressure from the Trump administration. According to recent reports, Apple plans to sign a contract with Intel to outsource some of its processor manufacturing. This news has resulted in a 14% increase in Intel’s stock price.
In addition to Apple, Intel is set to gain another client soon. Tesla’s current AI5 chip (codenamed Helios) is manufactured by TSMC and Samsung. The next-generation AI6 was also supposed to be produced by these two companies. However, a friend of mine who is involved in the Tesla project informed me that, due to pressure and insistence from the Trump administration (which is currently Intel’s largest shareholder), TSMC will no longer manufacture the AI6 chips. Instead, Intel will receive the manufacturing orders. Intel will receive the manufacturing orders for Tesla’s AI6 chips. Apple and Tesla represent the best publicity for the Trump administration, which is seeking a return to American-made chips ahead of the November midterm elections.
Tesla continues to rely on TSMC for mass production of its AI5 chips, with Samsung as a backup, given TSMC’s limited advanced node capacity. Given this, the likelihood that Tesla will shift from its primary manufacturer to Intel’s largely untested advanced nodes, which still struggle with yield issues, appears quite slim.
However, stranger things have happened, as the Trump administration is now acting as a staunch supporter of Intel. President Trump reportedly played a key role in convincing Apple CEO Tim Cook to accept the Intel-based chip manufacturing deal, even declaring at a meeting that he likes Intel and that the government has already made tens of billions of dollars from its stake in the chipmaker.
