Tesla has signed a $16.5 billion deal to get it’s next-generation chips from Samsung, TechCrunch reported: “Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation A16 chip,” Elon Musk posted on X late Sunday evening. “The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate.” Tesla’s A16 (AKA Hardware 6) chip is the company’s bet on an all-in-one chip design that can scale from powering its driver assistance system known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised) to Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, all the way to high-performance AI training in data centers. Musk noted Tesla is working with TSMC to make A15 chips, which just finished the design. The A15, a generation that is primarily built for FSD, will initially be made in TSMC’s Taiwan factory and then at its Arizona facility. Samsung already makes the AI14 chip, according to Musk. Samsung Electronics will manufacture artificial-intelligence chips for Tesla in Texas under a $16.5 billion multiyear deal, a major win for its U.S. foundry business that sent shares of South Korea’s largest company sharply higher, The Wall Street Journal reported. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk confirmed the deal on X, saying Samsung’s new facilities in Texas will be dedicated to making the U.S. electric-vehicle company’s next-generation A16 chip. “The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate,” he wrote. The contract comes as Samsung, he world’s largest memory-chip maker, struggles to catch up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in the foundry business — making chips on a contact basis for customers such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Apple, which design chips but don’t have their own factories to produce them. Samsung currently makes the A14 chip and TSMC will make the A15 chip, Musk said. The A16 chip is intended to be used in humanoid robots, self-driving cars and AI data centers. CNBC reported: Samsung Electronics has entered into a billion dollar contract for supplying semiconductors to Tesla, based on a regulatory filing by the South Korean firm and Tesla CEO Elon Musk posts on X. The memory chipmaker, which has not named the counterparty, mentioned in its filing that the effective start date of the contract was July 26, 2025 — receipt of orders — and its end date was Dec. 31, 2033. However, Musk later confirmed in a reply to a post on social media platform X that Tesla was the counterparty. He also posted: “Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation A16 chip. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate. Samsung currently makes AI4. SMC will make A15, which just finished design, initially in Taiwan and then Arizona.” Post navigation