Tesla CEO Elon Musk forwarded Tesla Korea’s recruitment notice and announced the recruitment of talents in the semiconductor field in South Korea. In the context of increasingly fierce competition in the artificial intelligence chip market, this move is regarded as Tesla's layout to strengthen its semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities.
Musk forwarded the recruitment information for artificial intelligence chip design engineers released by Tesla's Korean branch on his social platform X on the 17th local time.
Musk wrote in the post: "If you want to engage in chip design, wafer manufacturing and artificial intelligence software-related work in South Korea, you are welcome to apply for Tesla," and attached a Korean flag emoticon.
This recruitment action has been widely interpreted by the outside world as Tesla’s intention to tap South Korea’s top semiconductor design and process engineer resources to enhance the market competitiveness of its own artificial intelligence chips.
In South Korea, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are both global leaders in the field of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) required for artificial intelligence chips. As the demand for artificial intelligence computing power surges, the market demand for high-bandwidth memory is also rising rapidly.
This talent recruitment plan is also highly consistent with Tesla’s strategy of independently developing chips. Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI is developing a Grok large model to compete head-on with OpenAI's ChatGPT. To support this business, Tesla urgently needs high-performance artificial intelligence chips with massive data processing capabilities.
At the same time, in order to help Tesla's robot taxi business launch and promote the further upgrade of fully autonomous driving (FSD) technology, the demand for automotive semiconductors and data center artificial intelligence chips continues to grow.
Currently, Tesla is cooperating with Samsung Electronics and TSMC to produce artificial intelligence chips. Samsung Electronics will supply Tesla with the AI5 autopilot chip that is adapted to the fully autonomous driving system. It is reported that the performance of this chip is 40 times higher than that of the previous generation. Tesla initially considered having TSMC exclusively manufacture the chip, but later adjusted to a joint production model with Samsung Electronics.
In July last year, Samsung Electronics and Tesla signed a wafer foundry supply agreement worth 23 trillion won. According to the agreement, the next generation AI6 chips will be mass-produced at Samsung Electronics' factory in Tyler, Texas, USA.
According to reports, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong has maintained close contact with Musk since his first meeting in 2023. Today, the outside world is highly concerned about whether the two companies will further expand cooperation in the three core areas of semiconductors, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence.