Samsung Semiconductors
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had a meeting with Samsung’s Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong on May 11th, while the Samsung exec was Stateside - and from the agenda, it looks like Tesla is searching for a partner to help with semiconductors.
The Thursday meeting was held at Samsung’s Semiconductor Research and Development labs in California. The meeting was private, but reportedly included discussions about a potential partnership for Tesla’s autonomous driving, and semiconductor production.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Tesla and Samsung have worked together. The Korean electronics giant has previously provided camera hardware for the EV company, and they’ve even developed semiconductor chips for Tesla’s FSD systems before.
That makes them pretty ideal partners for a new batch of hardware - even if Tesla has made great leaps with their own processing hardware since their AI Day presentations in 2022. It could be that Tesla isn’t quite ready to use their own chips yet, or they need help manufacturing them.
Regardless, this meeting with Samsung seems to just be the first signs of Tesla looking for a partner in this arena. Just last November, it was reported that Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Limited were in talks with the EV maker to supply 4 and 5 nanometer hardware for Tesla’s newest iteration of their Full Self Driving computer - which Musk mentioned would be debuted with the Cybertruck.
With production of the new vehicle potentially less than a month away, it seems a bit late to be looking for chip suppliers - but as full production of the Cybertruck isn’t planned until next year, it’s possible Tesla intends on using current hardware until then.
Samsung seems the obvious choice here, given their familiarity with Tesla and the FSD systems, but we’ll just have to wait and see who Elon goes with.
It is exciting to see progression on that new FSD computer hardware though. With Elon’s recent comments on end-to-end AI being introduced in Version 12 of the FSD program, it seems that Tesla has been leaping forward with their tech lately.