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Musk says Tesla's mega AI chip fab project to launch in seven days

Japanese vendors are unlikely to fully back Elon Musk’s Terafab project, and the reason is simple: Panasonic. After overextending resources for the Gigafactory and accepting razor-thin margins, they felt "discarded" once Tesla pivoted to in-house battery tech. For Japanese firms, being treated as a disposable tool rather than a strategic partner is the ultimate Japanese business taboo. Without a foundation of mutual trust, the Japanese ecosystem will fully support Musk.

Especially in today’s environment of acute capacity shortages, the choice for suppliers is clear. If you are a Japanese vendor with limited output, would you prioritize a long-term, high-trust partner like TSMC, or a brand-new, volatile venture from Tesla
 
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VCT said:
Japanese vendors are unlikely to fully back Elon Musk’s Terafab project, and the reason is simple: Panasonic. After overextending resources for the Gigafactory and accepting razor-thin margins, they felt "discarded" once Tesla pivoted to in-house battery tech. For Japanese firms, being treated as a disposable tool rather than a strategic partner is the ultimate Japanese business taboo. Without a foundation of mutual trust, the Japanese ecosystem will fully support Musk.

Especially in today’s environment of acute capacity shortages, the choice for suppliers is clear. If you are a Japanese vendor with limited output, would you prioritize a long-term, high-trust partner like TSMC, or a brand-new, volatile venture from Tesla
Click to expand...

FWIW, Panasonic is still a large chunk of Tesla's battery business, even today, and are probably selling Tesla more cells than when the JV formed.

Panasonic has also failed to keep up with the Chinese battery makers in terms of tech -- they have no LFP offerings for example (big mistake), nor do they seem to be keeping up with CATL in terms of charging performance for NCM / NCA batteries. Tesla had to go to Panasonic's competition for LFP, and in-house to try to advance tech beyond what Panasonic offers today (4680 dry process, and "battery as structure").
 
For all of his companies sans the rockets, he went with straight technology licensing, and tech transfer, not unlike what PRC companies did.

Battery manufacturing, and car making, and power electronics/solar making, and chip manufacturing are such niche businesses that just hiring few senior people off the labour market and hoping them to monkey something with endless money will never work.

He can license a few years old node with really enormous moneys, sure. He can try to hire a very senior grey hair exec, and try to give him full authority to build a semblance of a working fab business (SMIC way,) but that assumes very long runway, and determination to at most be No. 3-5. It worked for SMIC because they aimed to be TSMC from decades ago – mass market foundry without pretensions that targets cost above all.
 
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