SpaceX and Tesla on Thursday formally unveiled plans for the initial phase of their Terafab project. The first stage of the plan — which is expected to use Intel's 14A process technology — is expected to require $16.8 billion in investment, while the completed campus is planned to encompass more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space. The massive semiconductor manufacturing complex will be built in Grimes County, Texas, at a location that belongs to SpaceX.
According to SpaceX and Tesla, their combined demand for semiconductors is projected to exceed 1 terawatt (TW) of compute per year, which significantly exceeds today's global supply. In fact, SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI already consume a significant portion of contract chipmaking services available today, and can potentially justify building a dedicated fab that will exclusively serve Elon Musk's companies. In particular, Terafab is envisioned to exclusively produce AI inference processors for Tesla Optimus humanoid robots and Cybercab autonomous vehicles, as well as 'high-power' processors intended for SpaceX's space-based data centers. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Tesla have not disclosed when their combined demand for compute per year will hit the 1 TW benchmark.
