Elon Musk says all of Tesla is determined by one tiny — however very costly — proposition

All of Tesla Inc. depends on making a tiny silicon chip that will power everything from driverless technology to robots, Chief Executive Elon Musk

said last week. But getting enough of those semiconductors will be an expensive task.

To start, Tesla TSLA is set to pay two companies — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. TSM TW:2330 and Samsung Electronics Co. KR:005930 — to make its next-generation AI5 chips at four separate sites, two of which are in the U.S. Neither TSMC nor Tesla have said how much the chip maker will be paid for its work.