SILICON VALLEY — Tesla and SpaceX, both led by Elon Musk, reported third-quarter results on the 20th and 21st. With Musk running companies worth a combined $3.5 trillion (4.644 quadrillion won) in market value, investors focused on what the CEO is thinking and how the two companies' business structures will be reshaped. Reflecting those expectations, the earnings calls produced news on several fronts, including a possible Tesla-SpaceX merger, the start of operations at the Terafab semiconductor plant in the first half of next year, and the beginning of production of the Optimus humanoid robot.
For Musk's plan to recast Tesla, an electric-vehicle maker, and SpaceX, a space exploration company, around superintelligence, robotics and space to succeed, he needs the talent to support it. In February, a Tesla Korea job posting seeking artificial intelligence talent in South Korea appeared on his social media account alongside 16 Korean flag emojis, a sign of how urgently the company needs to secure engineers. Tesla and SpaceX are putting considerable effort into recruiting as they prepare to execute the plan in earnest starting next year. Their current job listings offer a window into where both companies are headed.
As of the 22nd, 319 of the 5,460 global job openings posted by Tesla were in superintelligence. The roles span Optimus development, autonomous driving, machine learning, inference software engineering, data collection, three-dimensional computer vision, robotic hand repair and AI chip performance management. The software engineer position developing humanoid algorithms (SI Engineer, Manipulation, Optimus) pays $176,000 to $420,000 (233.55 million to 557.34 million won), with separate cash or stock compensation on top.
At its earnings presentation on the 21st, Tesla said it began producing Optimus at its Fremont plant in the third quarter. The units are still only at a level suitable for internal testing or deployment at assembly plants, but Tesla said the robots coming off the line are "the first mass-production robots we have manufactured," demonstrating that the humanoid manufacturing process can be applied to commercial products as well. Tesla said work is underway to integrate its AI5 chip into the robots by April next year. The AI5 is a custom chip produced at Samsung Electronics' (005930) plant in Taylor, Texas.
The problem is that many hurdles remain before Optimus can be commercialized. The Information reported last month that while Tesla has increased Optimus output nearly tenfold in recent months, it still struggles to achieve stable performance in volume production, citing difficulties in refining the robotic hands, expanding automation equipment and managing relationships with suppliers. The company has set plans to build a production line capable of more than 1,000 units a week by year-end, still far short of its ultimate target of 20,000 units a week.
On a conference call on the 21st, Musk said that "a lot of things have to go right" for a humanoid to work properly, adding that production "requires building out a global supply chain and constructing large domestic factories." He also said he expects those issues to be resolved around the end of next year and that by then Tesla should be able to supply robots to companies other than itself. That means commercialization still requires extensive research and testing, and correspondingly large numbers of top engineers.
Tesla also has 77 openings in its Terafab division, including memory system design, process management, semiconductor etching and lithography. Terafab is a large-scale semiconductor plant being pursued under a plan to vertically integrate every step of production so Tesla can make in-house the chips that will go into its self-driving vehicles and space exploration rockets. The scale is enormous: Musk has said Terafab "will be the most valuable building in the world," with economic value "on par with the top 20 countries in the world." Building a vertically integrated in-house chip supply chain requires capabilities across logic, memory, packaging, testing and lithography mask production — photomasks are a core material used to etch semiconductor circuits onto wafers.
Musk sees securing cutting-edge chips as critical to building an AI empire going forward, and memory is among the most important of those chips. The requirements for the Memory Systems Architect role, which is responsible for building Terafab's DRAM memory systems, call for more than 15 years of experience in DRAM architecture, memory systems or advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Tesla describes the job as coordinating "DRAM silicon, packaging, modules, boards and the broader systems in which memory is installed," and working with central processing unit, graphics processing unit and system-on-chip teams. Another role, Memory Design Interface Architect, requires more than 15 years of experience in high-bandwidth memory, low-power DRAM, SoC and application-specific integrated circuit design. When that posting went up in August, word that Tesla intends to develop DRAM and HBM itself prompted speculation that the three-way memory hierarchy of Samsung Electronics, SK hynix (000660) and Micron could be disrupted.
On the 21st, Musk said the Terafab semiconductor plant under construction in Austin, Texas, will begin operating in the first half of next year. "We can produce the first test chips around May or June next year, and the goal is to mass-produce chips around the third quarter of 2028," he said. At SpaceX's earnings presentation on the 20th, he said equipment deliveries for Terafab were being moved up.
SpaceX is also recruiting in AI, with openings in data center design, energy storage, electrical construction management, mechanical systems management, power plant construction management and supercomputer infrastructure control. The company is building large AI data centers called Colossus and Colossus 2 in the Memphis area of Tennessee, computing infrastructure facilities rated at 2 gigawatts with millions of GPUs. It is also constructing a large power plant in Southaven, Mississippi. Business Insider reported on the 21st, citing an internal email, that SpaceX will pay an additional 20% of salary to employees who volunteer for six-week assignments in Memphis and Southaven to speed up the data center buildout.
