According to reports from the Korean media, Samsung Electronics announced that it has reached a chip foundry agreement worth US$16.5 billion with an undisclosed customer. Although Samsung Electronics did not announce its customer name, market news pointed out that Samsung Electronics is likely to be conducting chip foundry for Tesla, a major US electric vehicle manufacturer.

Samsung Electronics announced in a relevant document sent on Monday that it had signed a chip foundry contract worth US$16.5 billion, which is equivalent to 7.6% of Samsung's 2024 acquisition. Samsung said the contract will come into effect on July 24 and will be valid until December 31, 2033. As for the customer name and other details are still in a confidential state, but insiders have guessed that the customer is likely to be a US electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.

Samsung Electronics and Tesla have been cooperating in the chip field, and its field is mainly concentrated in the design of vehicle chips and foundry manufacturing, especially in the development of artificial intelligence-processing chips related to self-driving vehicles. Among them, Samsung Electronics cooperated with Tesla as early as 2019 to produce Tesla's first generation self-designed self-driving chip FSD chips using a 14-nanometer process.

According to Korean media and industry news, Samsung has planned to cooperate with Tesla to develop the next generation of high-performance self-driving chips, mainly used in Tesla's FSD system and Dojo super computers. During the process, a dual-party technology team cooperated to conduct integrated evaluation of chip design and process (including 5-nanometer or 4-nanometer node processes). However, Tesla has used tyre-electrode 7nm-point processes on some FSD chips in the past. Therefore, although it is reported that Tesla still has a high view on Samsung's EUV production and yield issues, Samsung may still have the opportunity to cooperate with Tesla under the diversified supply chain policy.