Part 3/10:
The most significant news from the shareholder event was Tesla's announcement of plans to develop its own chip fabrication facility (fab). Musk explicitly mentioned that despite existing partnerships with semiconductor giants like TSMC and Samsung, Tesla perceives chip production as a looming bottleneck for its manufacturing ambitions.
Musk suggested that chips could become as prolific as smartphones, especially with the scaling of projects like Optimus and RoboTaxis. With initial estimates of first-generation Optimus manufacturing reaching around one million units annually—and potential future iterations scaling to hundreds of millions or even a billion robots—Tesla will require an unprecedented volume of custom chips.