"Thank You, Samsung Electronics"... Why Musk Offered an Unusual Public Thank-You During Earnings

[Financial News] Tesla CEO Elon Musk drew attention across the global semiconductor and IT industries after offering an unusual public thank-you to major foundry and memory chip suppliers during his second-quarter earnings presentation.
According to Newsis on the 25th, Musk directly named his foundry and memory partners during Tesla's second-quarter earnings conference call on the 22nd, local time, while explaining the company's plans to develop its own AI chips.
Musk began by saying, "I would like to thank Micron for prioritizing memory allocation," and added, "Memory prices have now risen to a rather abnormal level." As he went on to explain Tesla's semiconductor roadmap, he said, "Work in the chip area is progressing very smoothly," and added, "Once again, I would like to thank TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Micron for their support."
It is extremely rare for a listed-company CEO to publicly thank specific suppliers by name one after another during an official earnings call. Market watchers say the remarks suggest Tesla is increasing its reliance on an advanced semiconductor supply chain as it works to strengthen its competitiveness in autonomous driving and artificial intelligence.
Foreign media also focused on the fact that Musk gave special weight to Micron, a memory chip maker, alongside foundry giants TSMC and Samsung Electronics.
Until now, the center of the AI boom has been computing processors such as NVIDIA's graphics processing units (GPUs). But to build more advanced AI systems, a stable supply of advanced memory such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) has emerged as a critical requirement.
Musk also unveiled plans for an in-house semiconductor development facility called "TeraFab," where design, memory, photomask development, packaging, and testing would all be handled in one place. The strategy is aimed at dramatically shortening the development cycle for custom AI chips, but it would also require a sufficient supply of advanced memory.
The U.S. investment publication Benzinga said, "Musk's remarks clearly showed that the next bottleneck in the AI race may be memory mounted alongside the processor itself, rather than the processor alone," adding that "for investors, it was likely one of the most meaningful moments in this earnings release."


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