Tesla and SpaceX Plan $16.8 Billion Chip Factory Investment

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On August 6, SpaceX and Tesla announced plans to build the Terafab advanced semiconductor manufacturing campus in Grimes County, Texas. The first phase of the project is expected to involve a capital investment of approximately $16.8 billion, with the site already selected and plans to create at least 3,000 new jobs.

Terafab is planned to include over 100 million square feet of manufacturing space, equivalent to approximately 9.29 million square meters. The campus will consolidate the manufacturing, packaging, and testing of advanced logic and memory chips at a single site, along with supporting cleanrooms, production equipment, engineering facilities, and related energy and water treatment systems.

According to the project plan, chips produced at Terafab will cover a range of computing scenarios, including processors for edge computing and inference tasks, as well as chips suited for high-power computing. These products are intended for use in Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots, Cybercab autonomous vehicles, and SpaceX's space data centers, to meet the two companies' projected computing demand of over 1 terawatt in the future.

The State of Texas has provided SpaceX with a $30 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, and Terafab has also been designated as a qualified project under the state's Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation (JETI) program. This program allows local school districts to enter into agreements with project investors to cap the taxable value of eligible property for property tax purposes.

Application documents released by the Texas Comptroller's office show that Terafab is being filed by TeraFab AI LLC, with the entire manufacturing campus to be built in up to four phases, with project applications submitted to two school districts. Each phase is planned to operate independently for semiconductor manufacturing, and subsequent expansion decisions will be made separately based on the completion progress of earlier phases.