Tesla CEO Elon Musk (AFP-Yonhap) Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw his weight behind the company’s hiring push in South Korea, reposting a job notice for semiconductor engineers and urging local chip designers and software developers to join the US electric vehicle giant.
Musk retweeted a job posting from Tesla Korea on his X account on Tuesday, adding a South Korean flag emoji several times. “If you’re in Korea and want to work on chip design, fabrication or AI software, join Tesla!” he wrote.
Tesla Korea had posted an opening for artificial intelligence chip design engineers two days prior. In the notice, the company said it aims to develop an AI chip architecture that would achieve the highest production volume in the world and is seeking engineers to lead that effort.
Tesla’s move to recruit semiconductor talent in Korea is likely to intensify concerns over an outflow of skilled engineers. In recent years, specialists in memory chips and high bandwidth memory have moved to overseas firms such as US-based Micron Technology and China’s CXMT, raising worries about technology leakage.
Tesla is currently building AI data centers, where advanced semiconductors serve as the key infrastructure. Industry officials say the push points to broader ambitions beyond design.
. Producing AI semiconductors requires not only design capabilities, but also foundry partners for fabrication, memory chips to supply high-speed data to AI accelerators and advanced packaging technologies that integrate processors and memory into a single system.
In July last year, Tesla signed a $16.5 billion contract with Samsung Electronics to manufacture its A16 chips. At the time, Musk said he would personally stay near Samsung’s fab in Taylor, Texas, to oversee production. The remark added to speculation that Tesla may be preparing for a broader manufacturing push.
“Our AI5 chip design is almost done and AI6 is in early stages, but there will be AI7, AI8 and AI9,” Musk wrote on X in January. “Aiming for a 9-month design cycle. Join us to work on what I predict will be the highest volume AI chips in the world by far!”
Tesla’s AI series of chips power autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots and AI models, serving as high-performance processors at the center of the US electric vehicle-maker’s technology road map.
Some in the industry say Musk could ultimately move toward direct manufacturing of AI chips. The billionaire recently formalized plans to merge SpaceX, his space venture, with xAI, the AI startup building large language models. In Musk’s expanding AI ecosystem, chips are becoming a key strategic asset.
By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)