Elon Musk later said Tesla had raised its AI5 chip’s memory to 96 GB. He also stated that AI6 would have 144 GB of LP6. In his October 1, 2026 post, Musk tied the memory changes to securing enough volume for Optimus production and reducing costs.
Why Musk said Tesla changed the memory
Musk said the original reductions were intended to secure enough volume for Optimus production and greatly reduce costs. The memory update is a separate development from the hand and supplier issues described in NeoTeo’s earlier report on Optimus.
The stated memory figures for AI5 and AI6
Musk initially said AI5 would have 72 GB of LP5. In a later update, he said Tesla had raised AI5 to 96 GB. He separately stated that AI6 would have 144 GB of LP6.
What Musk said about performance
Musk expected the memory changes to have a negligible effect on Optimus performance. He said memory bandwidth was a bigger limitation than total memory capacity and that bandwidth was held constant.
The humanoid-robot estimate has a different scope
A reported estimate attributed to Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra puts humanoid robots’ needs at more than 200 GB of memory and multiple terabytes of storage per unit. That estimate concerns a whole robot, with storage stated separately; Musk’s figures refer to memory capacity for the AI5 and AI6 chips.
