Downtown Austin building linked to Musk to get $5.2M renovations

A company tied to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his effort to build the world’s largest computer chip-making plant is planning renovations at the Seaholm Power Plant downtown.

The $5.2 million project is in the works by Wit Tech LLC, a California company linked to SpaceX and its ambitious project to build what Musk has dubbed Terafab.

The Austin American-Statesman earlier reported the company had a lease for 35,000 square feet of space at Seaholm, the historic former power plant that was also the venue Musk chose this spring to announce his idea for Terafab.

According to a new state filing, Wit Tech is planning interior office renovations in a 35,000-square-foot space at Seaholm, with work expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The plans arrive as activity picks up on plans for Terafab. Since Musk’s initial announcement, Wit Tech, which shares a Palo Alto, Calif., address associated with SpaceX subsidiary xAI, has entered contracts to acquire more than 6,000 acres near College Station in Grimes County as the site for Terafab.

Soon after, the Grimes County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to grant the company a tax increment reinvestment zone and tax breaks for the $55 billion project. Since then, two Grimes County school districts gave their approval for property tax cuts under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation program. Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to approve them later. 

Though the main site is well east of Austin, the city is also expected to be a critical site for Terafab. When announcing the project earlier this year, Musk said it would start off with an advanced technology fabrication site in Austin.

Construction on the research plant began almost immediately after Musk’s announcement at Gigafactory Texas.

Now, downtown Austin is emerging as a possible site for work tied to Terafab, which also involves Tesla Inc. and xAI, SpaceX’s artificial intelligence startup. According to reports from commercial real estate firms Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE, at least part of the Seaholm site is a sublease of space formerly occupied by Athena Health. 

Musk hasn’t commented on downtown Austin’s part in the project. The building’s owner, Clarion Partners, and STG Designs, the firm listed for the renovations in the state filing, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Musk, though, has regularly touted his plans for Terafab, recently saying that SpaceX will launch the first AI satellites next year and begin doing so at large scale in about two years. 

The prospect of the massive project, which Musk has indicated could grow to 100 million square feet, is facing pushback in Grimes County, though. During a recent Iola school board meeting, residents voiced concerns about potential ballooning school class sizes and past safety issues involving SpaceX, referencing SpaceX’s sonic booms at its rocket engine testing site in McGregor and environmental violations at Starbase in South Texas, where it’s developing and launching its Starship mega-rocket.

“In my opinion, there is a track record of some outside influences with SpaceX coming in and some very negative things that could happen to our environment and our peaceful living that we’re all accustomed to and that we want to hold on to,” a public commenter said at a July school board meeting.