Commenting on Musk, he called the Tesla A15 chip "epic": a new engine for technological transformation

On September 7th, Musk posted on X, stating that he had just had a great design review with the Tesla AI5 chip design team and claiming that "this will be an epic chip". He also said that AI is probably the best inference chip for models with fewer than 250 billion parameters, and the subsequent AI6 is also expected to be the most outstanding AI chip. This statement instantly caused a stir in the technology field, generating widespread attention and discussion, and its influence spread across multiple aspects. Musk also said that Samsung is currently producing the AI4 chip. TSMC will first produce the AI5 chip that has just been designed in Taiwan, and then in Arizona, the United States.

From Tesla's own strategic layout, the AI5 chip holds significant importance. Previously, Tesla adopted a dual-track chip development strategy of "training + inference", where the Dojo chip was used for training and the FSD chip for on-board inference. However, this model dispersed resources and efforts. Now, the Dojo project has been halted and Tesla is fully committed to the development of AI5 and AI6, which reflects Tesla's strategic transformation of concentrating resources and making precise breakthroughs. AI5 focuses on the training of vehicle inference computing clusters and is expected to be mass-produced by the end of 2026. The subsequent AI6 is regarded as the "unified heart" of the future AI ecosystem. This indicates that Tesla is strengthening its core competitiveness through self-developed chips, promoting the advancement of autonomous driving technology to new heights, reducing reliance on external suppliers, accelerating the process of software and hardware integration, and achieving more efficient and cost-effective technological iterations.

From the perspective of the development of the autonomous driving field, the emergence of the AI5 chip may become a catalyst for industry transformation. The core of autonomous driving lies in the strong computing power support. If the AI5, as Musk claims, has the lowest silicon cost and the highest performance-to-power ratio, it will reshape the industry landscape. Currently, the development of autonomous driving technology faces many bottlenecks, among which insufficient computing power and high costs are particularly prominent. The AI5 chip is expected to break this predicament, promoting autonomous driving to advance from assisted driving to a higher level of fully autonomous driving, encouraging more enterprises to increase investment in chip research and development and the optimization of autonomous driving algorithms, and accelerating the technological implementation and commercialization process.

In the field of artificial intelligence chips, the AI5 chip will also trigger a competitive wave. For a long time, NVIDIA has held a dominant position in the AI chip sector. However, the strong entry of Tesla's AI5 and AI6 chips is expected to break this situation. The AI6 chip is planned to be applied in the robot taxi Cybercab and the humanoid robot Optimus, and to enter the AI data center, directly competing with NVIDIA's H200 GPU. This will stimulate market competition vitality, prompt chip companies to accelerate technological innovation, promote continuous improvement in chip performance and continuous reduction in costs, and provide stronger computing power support for the development of the artificial intelligence industry.

Of course, we also need to view Musk's remarks rationally. Although Tesla has achieved remarkable results in technological innovation, from the design to the mass production and then to the large-scale application of chips, every step is fraught with challenges. After the AI5 chips enter mass production, issues such as actual performance, market acceptance, and compatibility with other systems all need to be verified over time.

Overall, Musk's "epic" assessment of Tesla's AI5 chip has painted a visionary future blueprint for the technology sector. Regardless of the final outcome, it has already stimulated the innovation vitality of the industry, encouraging more enterprises to engage in technological research and development, and driving the continuous advancement of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence chip technologies.