Tesla and SpaceX announced Terafab last Thursday, a jointly developed semiconductor plant in Grimes County, Texas, north of Houston. The initial commitment is $16.8 billion. SpaceX has floated total spending reaching $119 billion across later construction phases.
The scale is the story. Plans describe more than 100 million square feet housing manufacturing, packaging and testing for both advanced logic and memory. Elon Musk called it the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far. At least 3,000 people would be employed from Grimes and Brazos counties.
The demand case is internal. Tesla wants silicon tuned for Optimus, SpaceX wants it for orbital infrastructure including space-based AI data centres, and neither wants to queue behind everyone else for foundry capacity. Intel has committed to contributing, though what that involves has not been spelled out.
No construction or completion dates were given, which is the part to watch. SpaceX did commit to drawing water from the Gibbons Creek Reservoir rather than local groundwater, a detail that tends to decide whether Texas fab projects clear local opposition.
