Elon Musk calls for engineering talent as Tesla accelerates annual AI chip development push

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has issued an open call for top-tier engineers as the company intensifies its drive to build a new AI chip every year — a pace that, if realised, would put it in direct competition with major semiconductor players and in-house AI chip efforts at Google, Meta and OpenAI.

In a post on X, Musk outlined Tesla’s accelerated roadmap for next-generation chipsets that will power its vehicles, data centres and robotics programmes. He said Tesla has already been developing its own AI chips “for years”, with “several million” now deployed across its fleet and infrastructure. These chips currently run the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and support workloads for the Optimus humanoid robot, forming what Musk describes as the backbone of Tesla’s “real-world AI”.

Most people don’t know that Tesla has had an advanced AI chip and board engineering team for many years.

That team has already designed and deployed several million AI chips in our cars and data centers. These chips are what enable Tesla to be the leader in real-world AI.

The…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2025

With demand for more powerful on-device intelligence increasing, Musk now wants Tesla to shorten its development cycle dramatically — shifting from multi-year iterations to an annual release model.

He wrote that the “current version in cars is AI4”, adding that Tesla is “close to taping out AI5” while simultaneously starting work on AI6. The long-term aim, he said, is to bring “a new AI chip design to volume production every 12 months”, and ultimately manufacture chips “at higher volumes than all other AI chips combined”.

As part of the recruitment drive, Musk urged engineers with exceptional expertise in AI chip design, physical layout, board engineering and signal integrity to email Tesla directly, accompanied by “three bullet points” demonstrating their capabilities.

Musk also emphasised his personal involvement in the company’s hardware roadmap, noting: “FWIW, I’m deeply involved in chip design and meet with the engineering team every Tuesday and Saturday.” He added that the Saturday sessions will pause once the AI5 chip has fully taped out. Musk has a longstanding reputation for hands-on oversight of critical engineering phases at Tesla and SpaceX.

With Tesla pushing deeper into custom silicon at an unprecedented pace, the company is positioning its AI hardware strategy as central to its broader ambitions in autonomous driving, robotics and large-scale real-world AI systems.