Tesla and SpaceX name a Texas site for Terafab, with $16.8B for phase one
Tesla and SpaceX confirmed Grimes County, Texas for Terafab, committing $16.8B to a first phase of a 100-million-square-foot plant with at least 3,000 jobs, drawing water from Gibbons Creek Reservoir instead of local groundwater. The figure is down from the $25B pitched in March, and SpaceX's May IPO filing called Terafab a "general framework" with no binding commitments — the site is real, the buildout is not yet. Near-term Tesla silicon still comes from Samsung and TSMC, making Terafab a long bet on Musk's claim that Optimus, Cybercabs, and orbital data centers will need over a terawatt of compute per year.
Source: electrek.co ↗
Both Tesla & SpaceX will need far more chips than current & future global production can supply.
Tesla
Why this matters
- → Long-term bet on compute demand that doesn't yet exist in chip industry
- → Massive capex commitment ($16.8B+) before Tesla's car business stabilizes
- → Gap between public claims and IPO fine print signals execution risk
Chip factory ambition