Elon Musk says Tesla's hiring for its big AI chip push — and he's 'deeply involved' in the design meetings (www.businessinsider.com)

Elon Musk is publicly recruiting engineers for Tesla’s expanded AI chip effort, asking candidates to email three bullets proving “exceptional ability” and saying he’s “deeply involved” in chip design—meeting with the team every Tuesday and Saturday. Tesla aims to deliver a new AI chip design to volume production every 12 months, claims it will ultimately build chips at higher volumes than all other AI chips combined, and says current in-car silicon (AI4) is nearing replacement as AI5 is close to tape‑out while AI6 work has begun. Open roles in Palo Alto include senior physical design engineers (10+ years IC design) and signal & power integrity engineers, with total compensation ranges in the roughly $120k–$318k and $152k–$264k bands respectively. Technically, Tesla is moving from in-house chip architecture through tape‑out to high-volume manufacturing—backed by a $16.5B Samsung foundry deal to build Tesla’s A16 at a new Texas fab—signaling serious vertical integration for vehicles and Optimus robots. The emphasis on “applying cutting‑edge AI to chip design” suggests use of ML-driven layout/optimization, while hires focused on physical design and power/signal integrity reflect work to scale performance, yield and reliability for automotive/robotic workloads. If Tesla hits its cadence, it could accelerate domain-specific silicon innovation and supply-scale dynamics, but it also brings talent, tape‑out risk and fab coordination challenges.