Musk says he’s building Terafab chip plant in Austin, Texas

Elon Musk has announced plans to build a Terafab factory in Austin, Texas, which will be jointly managed by Tesla and SpaceX. The goal is to eventually build large-scale chips for robotics, artificial intelligence and space data centers for Musk’s various companies.

Musk has expressed concerns, like other executives, about the chip industry’s ability to meet demand as the AI ​​industry booms. But building a chip manufacturing plant is complex, requiring billions of dollars, many years, and a ton of specialized equipment. And, like Bloomberg points out that Musk “has no experience in semiconductor production and has consistently overpromised on goals and deadlines.”

According to BloombergMusk said, “Either we build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab,” before laying out plans to produce chips that could support up to 200 gigawatts per year of computing power on Earth and up to a terawatt in space. Although Musk gave some details about how much computing power he expects Terafab to produce, he offered no timetable for when it might achieve those goals, or even when the facility might come online.