The Trump administration is leaning on Tesla to shift AI6.5 chip production from TSMC to Intel’s Arizona fabs.
After taking a stake in Intel, US President Donald Trump’s administration seems to have appointed itself Chipzilla’s sales department. That means courting the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple and leaning on Tesla, if the latest rumours are to be believed.
Trump has already been talking up the “tens of billions of dollars” the US government has supposedly made from Intel’s share surge. Now the White House is reportedly trying to push Tesla away from TSMC and into Chipzilla’s waiting arms.
Tesla is said to be facing pressure to move fabrication of its AI6.5 chips from TSMC to Intel. That would be a chunky win for Chipzilla’s foundry ambitions, assuming the rumour has legs.
In April, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said Tesla’s AI6 chip would be made at Samsung’s 2nm fab in Arizona. The higher-specced AI6.5 chip was set for TSMC’s Arizona campus.
Tesla’s AI6 chip is scheduled to tape out in December 2026. AI6.5 is expected to follow a couple of months later.
Both chips reportedly use a large SRAM allocation. Musk said last month: “Both chips have half of the TRIP AI computation accelerators dedicated to SRAM, so effective memory bandwidth is an order of magnitude greater than DRAM bandwidth for any calculations in SRAM cache.”
AI6 and AI6.5 are expected to use new LPDDR6 memory. These changes should help the chips deliver twice the performance of AI5 while keeping the same reticle size.
Tipster Jukan has spotted a Weibo-based source claiming Tesla is considering moving AI6.5 production from TSMC to Intel “under the pressure and insistence of the Trump administration.”
The post said: “Recent news reports that Apple will sign a contract with Intel to outsource some of its processor manufacturing have caused Intel’s stock price to surge by 14 per cent. Besides Apple, Intel will soon have another customer, Tesla. Tesla’s current AI5 chip (codenamed Helios) is foundry-manufactured by TSMC and Samsung, and the next-generation AI6 was originally intended to be manufactured by these two companies as well. A friend involved in the Tesla project informed me that, under the pressure and insistence of the Trump administration (which is now Intel’s largest shareholder), the AI6 foundry portion manufactured by TSMC will be transferred to Intel. Therefore, Intel will receive the foundry orders for Tesla’s AI6. Both Apple and Tesla will be the best publicity for the Trump administration’s push for a return to American-made chips during the November midterm elections.”
Tesla still relies on TSMC for most AI5 chip fabrication. Samsung is more of a backup, particularly with TSMC’s advanced-node capacity jammed solid.
That makes a full move from Tesla’s main foundry partner to Chipzilla’s still-young advanced nodes look unlikely. Intel still has yield questions hanging around its foundry plans, which is not what customers want near a flagship AI chip.
Still, the Trump administration has become a determined cheerleader for Chipzilla. Stranger things have happened when industrial policy turns into a sales pitch with flags attached.
Trump was reportedly involved in selling an Intel-based fabrication agreement to Job’s Mob chief executive Tim Cook. In one meeting, Trump said he liked Intel and claimed the government had already made “tens of billions of dollars” from its stake in the chipmaker.
