Tesla mulls AI chip terafoundry as it details new Roadster, Semi, Optimus, and Cybercab release dates

Tesla announced that it will start mass Cybercab production in April, with one rolling off the conveyor belt every 10 seconds or so, 4x faster than a Model Y.

By then, most major US cities will be covered by its Robotaxi platform, with Miami, Dallas, Phoenix and Las Vegas scheduled as the next immediate markets of operation. The Cybercab has been slightly redesigned since its initial announcement, but it will be produced without pedals or a steering wheel still.

The big design refresh, however, has been reserved for the second generation of Tesla's big Semi truck. The refresh will enter mass production in 2026 as well, with a new light bar, increased payload capacity and 15% efficiency increase to just 1.7 kWh/mile. The charging speed has been bumped to 1.2 MW, or the maximum that Tesla's NACS standard allows at a respective V4 Supercharger station.

During its 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting where Elon Musks' $1T pay package got approved by 70% of the shareholders, Tesla also tipped that the big new Roadster reveal will happen on April 1, 2026, while the  actual Roadster 2 release date will be in 2027. It still has a Roadster 2 demo scheduled for this year, though, where fans might see why Elon Musk says that the supercar will be able to "fly."

The mass Optimus 3 humanoid robot production is scheduled for 2026, too, with an initial line for one million units built at Fremont, then another one for 10x the amount in Giga Texas. Elon Musk is speeding up the mass Optimus production plans as Chinese companies like XPeng have announced very competitive humanoid robots and plan to start churning them en masse in 2026. "Tesla and Chinese companies will dominate the market," opined Musk.

Tesla's first mass market electric vehicle, the Cybercab, but also its Optimus robots, will require a lot of AI chips and batteries to make them tick. Tesla thus gave an update on its lithium refinery that will be operational next year with a planned capacity of 50 GWh. Besides its own lithium refinery and battery factories, Elon Musk said that Tesla may also have to build its own AI chip foundry:

It’s not just a new chapter for Tesla, it’s a new book. And that new book is massively increasing vehicle production and ramping up Optimus production faster than anything’s ever been ramped up before in human history. Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it’s still not enough. So I think we may have to do a Tesla terafab. It’s like giga, but way bigger.

Needless to say, Musk is prone to hyperbole, especially when he just got a potential trillion-dollar compensation package approved. He did give some update on the Tesla AI5 chip specs, however, saying that it will enter production about a year from now with a 50x "total" advantage over AI4. It will still be produced by both Samsung and TSMC, while the AI6 chip will be done exclusively by Samsung in its Texas foundry. This leaves Tesla's own chip foundry taking the reins for the AI7 and AI8 chips that Musk also teased not long ago.

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