Musk Cuts Memory Configs on Tesla AI5 and AI6 Chips to Secure Supply for Optimus Production

Elon Musk announced on October 2 via X that Tesla will reduce the memory configurations of its AI5 and AI6 chips to secure enough DRAM supply for Optimus robot production. The AI5 chip's RAM will drop from the originally planned 144GB to 72GB LP5, a 50% reduction, while the AI6 chip's RAM will be cut from 216GB to 144GB LP6, a roughly 33% decrease.

The move follows a forecast by Micron Technology's CFO during its latest earnings call, which identified humanoid robots as a new driver of memory demand, with each unit requiring over 200GB of DRAM and several terabytes of NAND flash. Even if the AI bubble burst, memory prices would be hard to fall. A user named @DirtyTesLa amplified the estimate, noting that 10 billion robots would consume 2 trillion GB of memory, whereas global DRAM production is only about 45 billion GB per year.

Musk responded that memory bandwidth is more likely than total capacity to become a performance bottleneck, and since bandwidth remains unchanged, the impact on Optimus performance is expected to be negligible.