Musk is rumored to have softened his stance on TSMC and is negotiating joint ventures and operations for super chip factories

Foreign media wccftech cited a DigiTimes report that initially stated that TSMC could only serve as a subcontractor for its chip manufacturing projects, but now his stance seems to have softened. Previously, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia said in the company's latest earnings call that the company is negotiating with Musk, and that if any cooperation is to be reached, TSMC must be responsible for the operation of the factory.

Musk's Terafab project is large in scale and plans to provide more than 1 terawatt of computing power, which has also triggered various rumors. For example, a report in October said Musk was initially interested in acquiring chip factories from Intel, TSMC and Micron before deciding to build his own.

Musk has remained humble since he decided to build his own chip manufacturing plant. Early last month, he admitted that he still had a lot to learn about chip manufacturing; he also admitted that he was surprised by the lack of customization of chip manufacturing equipment.

However, one of the biggest controversial points in the Terafab plan is Musk's cooperation with TSMC, and DigiTimes claims to have new details. According to reports, Musk is planning to renegotiate with TSMC. Details show that factors such as operational control and joint investment are among the negotiations. In addition, as the demand for artificial intelligence chips has led to tight supply in the chip packaging industry, the discussions between the two parties also covered advanced packaging technology.

The information on packaging comes after an earlier report in South Korea indicated that Huida and Tesla were helping Samsung build chip packaging substrate production facilities. Although TSMC's CoWoS packaging is the first choice for artificial intelligence GPUs, other packaging solutions such as Intel's EMIB-T have also reportedly attracted interest from chip designers.