Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla will be investing $16.8 billion to build Terafab, an advanced AI semiconductor complex in Grimes County, Texas. SpaceX said in a statement that future expansion phases could push total investment much higher. The company added that the facility would employ at least 3,000 people.
“The Terafab is bringing cutting-edge manufacturing to America, creating thousands of high-paying jobs in the Lone Star State, and enabling us to produce AI chips at scale for use on Earth and in space,” Musk said.
Musk said on X that the factory will be “the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.” More than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space is planned for the facility, according to SpaceX.
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The companies say the facility will employ at least 3,000 people from Grimes and nearby Brazos County.
“The facility will be an advanced semiconductor fab that will bridge the divide between current global chip supply and the compute demand of the future,” a post on SpaceX’s website reads.
According to a Reuters report, the vertically integrated, 100-million-square-foot Terafab plant will make, package and test advanced logic and memory chips under one roof, producing processors needed to power Tesla’s Optimus robots and Cybercabs, as well as high-power chips to run SpaceX’s space-based data centers.
A May filing revealed SpaceX has proposed an initial investment of $55 billion to build the Terafab, with the total amount rising to $119 billion if extra phases are completed.
Earlier this year, Intel said it would be joining SpaceX and Tesla to build Terafab.
The chipmaker said it would help Musk’s companies “refactor” silicon fab technology, with Tan describing Terafab as a “step change” in chip manufacturing. “This is exactly what is needed in semiconductor manufacturing today,” he wrote.
“Terafab will be epic in both its mission and in its sheer size, designed to build new compute at an unprecedented scale and speed. A vertically integrated factory with more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space is planned. This facility will house the manufacturing, packaging, and testing of advanced logic and memory devices,” SpaceX wrote on its website.
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“Bringing these aspects together in one location will enable fast, recursive improvements and accelerate new compute deployed. Terafab will produce chips optimized for edge computing and inference for use in hardware like Tesla’s Optimus robots and self-driving Cybercabs, along with high-power chips designed for operating SpaceX’s space-based data centers,” the company wrote.
The company also said n its post that it is “committing to the use of” water from the local Gibbons Creek Reservoir instead of local groundwater.