Interaction between WBT and Tesla would have started probably 2 yrs ago and predate current geopolitical tensions. If I was a Tesla shareholder my advocacy to the BOD would be to tell him to STFU.
Whatever his private beliefs, cutting your nose off to spite your face isn't a thing multi billionaires typically do, especially when one company(WBT) has the only analog and digital design teams to make a brand new highly disruptive tech work.
Tesla has for years said they nearly have the holy grail of full self driving but can't quite get there. The only plausible reason has to be the NVM IMO. It is the weak link, the roadblock, and why I believe Tesla desperately needs ReRam. It is my belief that ReRam was part of the reason Tesla changed from Samsung to TSMC for Architecture 4, at the time a total surprise to all. People posited they changed for TSMC's smaller node size but could it have been to get ReRam into use for full self driving as well. Except TSMC tells them they don't do anolog or digital design, oops! Hence why they would have approached WBT who have informed shareholders that TSMC ReRam customers have approached them for this very service.
So why would Tesla want ReRam other than to replace flash which has been shown to wear out quickly in their cars? Well just as Tesla charging connector is now the industry standard in Nth America with the rest of world probably to follow due to its ease of use and far superior design, the solving of full self driving out in the wild rather than geofenced like Waymo and the now defunct Cruise would force all other auto manufacturers to licence the technology. The race to win at full self driving is worth $trillions and as per our knowledge re disruption there are only a few winners. But it doesn't stop there, as cracking the code on full self driving will have a direct correlation to the Tesla Bot, a product bigger than all Tesla's other products combined.
ReRam is a Radically Disruptive product that will allow the creation of new markets that dwarf the Flash Memory NVM today. Full self driving and Robots alone will create 2 new markets bigger than the world has ever seen before and Tesla who wants to win that race, and can't IMO without ReRam, is talking with WBT. Tesla is definitely a "name" everyone will know as well.
Interestingly the quarterly showed income above guidance that seems to indicate a couple of unnamed customers. It could be that both Tesla and Starlink are possible as if it is Tesla, Starlink makes perfect sense. Hard Rad certified and far superior security wise would definitely appeal to Starlink along with known performance increase. Starlink was first put to me by
@Fatman8 so want to acknowledge that.
In the end everyone will be using ReRam but if your first customer is a name everyone knows then for the reasons stated Tesla has always been top of my list.
These are my own thoughts based on hours of looking into Tesla's direction and guidance on FSD and Bots plus thousands of klms using just autosteer which is unbelievably good on the motorway.
(20min delay)