Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 08/12/2026 2:26:37 PM PDT by lasereye
Elon Musk is betting that the next phase of his sprawling technology empire will require a building on a scale that has never existed before. SpaceX and Tesla are building Terafab, a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor manufacturing facility in Grimes County, Texas, more than five times the size of the world's largest building.
"Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far. And it will be stunningly beautiful," Musk wrote on X.
"We're now embarking on the most epic chip-building effort—combining logic, memory, and advanced packaging all under one roof," said Musk in a press release. The project seeks to "close the gap" between the chip production necessary for today and the demand for future production when humanity, according to Musk, eventually embarks on space travel.
"Terafab is bringing cutting-edge manufacturing to America, creating thousands of high-paying jobs," he continued, "and enabling us to produce AI chips at scale for use on Earth and in space."
With about 18.9 million square feet of floor space, the New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, currently holds the record for the world's largest building. But Terafab is expected to exceed that quickly: "The first phase of the Terafab project represents a capital investment of more than $16.8 billion and will create 3,000 new jobs," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in a press release.
The accompanying vision is even more ambitious than the building itself. The Terafab website describes the project as a vertically integrated chip factory that will combine logic, memory, and advanced packaging under one roof. Both SpaceX and Tesla will benefit from the facility, which is designed to produce more than 1 terawatt of compute annually.
Terafab is less of a conventional semiconductor factory rather than an attempt by Musk to build an enormous piece of his own technology supply chain. Both companies expect their combined demand for computing power to eventually exceed 1 terawatt. Terafab will bring chip manufacturing, packaging, and testing into one singular operation. The project aspires to launch a galactic civilization by harnessing "all of the energy on a planet," echoing Musk's sci-fi dreams.
Terafab's website ties the factory to Musk's longer-term vision of AI infrastructure. According to the site, the project is intended to produce AI chips at scale, supporting a vision that includes as many as 1 million Tesla Optimus robots, 10 million tons of mass launched into orbit annually, and more than 1 terawatt of solar power.
SpaceX went public in June, raising $75 billion by selling 555.56 million shares at $135 apiece. While the company had an initial valuation of about $1.77 trillion at the time, the public markets have already forced investors to confront the costs behind Musk's ambitions. SpaceX reported a $541 million loss in its first quarterly earnings report as a public company, despite generating $7.8 billion in revenue. The $16.8 billion announced for Terafab is only the initial investment.
Musk hopes to use taxpayer dollars to offset some of the costs associated with building the largest single property in the world. The project has filed eight tax incentive applications with the two local school districts, asking to freeze school maintenance and operations property taxes at roughly 48% of appraised value for 10 years per phase. Terafab is asking the state to cover the difference of the maintenance and operations (M&0) and interest and sinking (I&S) taxes using the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation, or JETI, program.
The company's explanation for the tax breaks centered on the cost differential between Texas and "competing jurisdictions," it wrote in the applications.
"Absent the limitation, the project IRR would fall below the minimum investment threshold, and competing jurisdictions (e.g., Arizona) would present a more favorable after-tax return," the application read, "in which case the project would likely be relocated outside Texas."
To Abbott, Texas is willing to take the hit. Texas extended SpaceX a $30 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant according to Abbott's press release. SpaceX is already headquartered in Texas, as well as both Starbase's launch facility and its manufacturing plant. Terafab is just another testament to Musk's Texas footprint, Abbott said.
"Texas is where big ideas grow even bigger," the governor said in the release. He called Terafab a "first-of-its-kind" facility that would accelerate chip production and create thousands of jobs.
The Terafab website compares the planned 100 million square feet with Tesla's roughly 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory Texas and says the facility is designed around production at "terawatt scale."
SpaceX and the office of Gov. Abbott both did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Wow! assuming that is a single floor, it will cover over 400 acres not including parking and any outside space needed....thats a BIG building...almost a mile from one end to the other (assuming it is square which it probably won’t be)
It will be the 21st century equivalent of Henry Ford’s Rouge River mega-factory, a massive, self-sufficient industrial complex where raw materials entered one end and finished autos leave the other.
And I thought the Austin Tesla factory was huge.
If square, 100 million square feet would be 10,000 X 10,000 feet.
The more prestige and wealth for Texas, the better.
Approximately 4 times the size of the nation of Monaco.
That will sure put Grimes county on the map.
County Seat is Anderson, Texas. Population of the county is about 30,000. Probably more cattle than humans.
I am somewhat shocked that Musk wants to manufacture semiconductors. Semiconductor companies have always been unfathomable to me, with an almost religious belief in “cycles”.
I am, also, not a huge fan of vertical integration, but Musk has an appetite that seems to know no bounds.
I certainly wish him the best.
Good idea to have a dedicated chip fab considering all the irons he has in the fire. Can control production cycles, make space hardened chips, and don’t have to worry about China installing backdoors in the IC’s/
You are right! - I plugged in the 18.9M SF mentioned, not the 100M, but that was for a different building....my bad.
2200 Acres! almost 8 miles around the outside....
This is the render for TERAFAB in Grimes County, Texas!
It will exceed 100 million square feet, require an initial $16.8 billion investment, employ at least 3,000 people, and produce chips for Optimus, Cybercabs, and SpaceX space-based data centers.https://t.co/j9uKeLw5b7 pic.twitter.com/6UH4wPIwJ9— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 6, 2026
This would be about four square miles.
TERAFAB is an absolute monster... and calling it a chip factory completely misses the scale...
SpaceX and Tesla are building the industrial engine that supplies the computer brains for AI, autonomous vehicles, Optimus robots, satellites and massive computing systems in orbitNow watch the architecture come together... TERAFAB manufactures the silicon... xAI builds the intelligence... Tesla puts that intelligence into machines... Starlink connects everything... Starship moves enormous amounts of hardware into orbit... orbital compute takes the entire system beyond the limits of Earth...
This is the Economy At Scale template I've been mapping coming alive at the silicon layer... own more of the stack, manufacture at enormous scale, crush costs, accelerate iteration and remove dependency on outside suppliers...
TERAFAB isn't simply another factory... it is infrastructure for manufacturing intelligence at civilization scale...
https://t.co/ekFXmSd8cN pic.twitter.com/6UrYHw83CY— Observing Consciousness (@holonabove) August 6, 2026
And that ain’t all he’s going to build. Besides the Terafab, there’ll be an 11-million-square-foot facility called the Gigasat Factory in Bastrop County and he’s looking for a data center site in Texas.
Closer to Houston than Austin. Nearest towns of any size are Bryan/College Station and Navasota.
No problem!!
There are already larger data centers than 400 acres. Microsoft has one with over 600 in Georgia.
Try more like this:
100,000,000 square feet equals approximately:
2,295.68 acres (or roughly 2,296 acres)
3.59 square miles
To break down the conversions:
1 acre = 43,560 square feet
1 square mile = 640 acres (or 27,878,400 square feet)
I just was offered a contract role helping to finish up a large data center east of Lubbock, Texas. I am grateful for the opportunity.
Remember the megacorp from Alien and Aliens—the Weyland-Yutani Corporation? For a far more plausible vision of the future, science-fiction films should instead emblazon their starships with the SpaceX insignia.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.