{"id":29877,"date":"2026-05-06T18:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/29877\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T18:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:20:10","slug":"elon-musks-spacex-chip-fab-in-texas-to-cost-up-to-119-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/29877\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX chip fab in Texas to cost up to $119 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk arrives at the federal courthouse during proceedings in the trial over his lawsuit against OpenAI in Oakland, California, on April 30, 2026. <\/p>\n<p>Josh Edelson | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/elon-musk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elon Musk&#8217;s<\/a> plans for a huge chip manufacturing plant in East Texas will cost at least $55 billion for the first phase, and up to $119 billion if the full buildout comes to fruition. <\/p>\n<p>The estimated capital investment amounts were disclosed in a <a href=\"https:\/\/grimescountytx.govoffice.com\/vertical\/Sites\/%7B958238D0-27E6-4F6C-919E-F1D98542C5FD%7D\/uploads\/SpaceX_-_Grimes_County_-_30_Day_Notice_of_Tax_Abatement_(proposed_for_posting_by_May_4_for_June_3_meeting)(1).pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">public hearing notice<\/a> on Wednesday in Grimes County, Texas, home of the prospective facility. The notice said SpaceX, which is controlled by Musk, is seeking a property tax abatement agreement from the county.<\/p>\n<p>Grimes County will hold a public hearing on June 3, to consider the proposed tax breaks.<\/p>\n<p>Musk, who&#8217;s also CEO of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TSLA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tesla<\/a>, is aiming for Terafab to be the &#8220;most epic chip-building effort ever &#8211; combining logic, memory and advanced packaging under one roof,&#8221; according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SpaceX\/status\/2041508085215187427\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">post<\/a> on X last month from SpaceX, which now owns artificial intelligence company xAI. He officially launched the project in March.<\/p>\n<p>The chip complex outside Austin would be designed to manufacture chips for SpaceX, xAI and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TSLA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tesla<\/a>, and jointly built by those companies.<\/p>\n<p>In April, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/INTC\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Intel<\/a> announced it will be joining the Terafab project to help &#8220;design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale.&#8221; It&#8217;s the first major outside commitment for the capital-intensive foundry side of Intel&#8217;s business, which to date has only manufactured chips for its own products. <\/p>\n<p>During Tesla&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/22\/tesla-tsla-q1-2026-earnings-report.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first-quarter earnings call<\/a> last month, Musk said Tesla plans to use Intel&#8217;s forthcoming 14A process to produce chips at the facility. Intel&#8217;s stock popped on the news and had its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/30\/intel-has-best-month-ever-after-years-of-losing-to-tsmc-and-nvidia.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">best month ever<\/a> in April, more than doubling in value. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/108243968-1766101436309-katie_Naga.jpg\" alt=\"Can Intel&#x2019;s New Arizona Chip Fab Bring It Back From The Brink?\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Intel is positioned to benefit from the ongoing AI boom as manufacturing capacity is getting harder to come by at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TSM\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing<\/a>, where giants like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NVDA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/AAPL\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple<\/a> have reserved their chipmaking availability for years to come. <\/p>\n<p>Ben Bajarin, a chip analyst at Creative Strategies, said Musk is embarking on a &#8220;15-year strategy,&#8221; knowing that his companies need to control the supply chain as &#8220;it would be very, very hard for them to have any priority at TSMC.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t just wake up one day and say, &#8216;I&#8217;m going to be a foundry,'&#8221; Bajarin said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a very mature process with constraints across the board on how these things get made.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On a Tesla earnings call in January, Musk said key chip suppliers couldn&#8217;t possibly produce enough hardware to satisfy the automaker&#8217;s needs, and that building a Terafab was &#8220;actually also going to be very important to ensure that we are protected against any geopolitical risks.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Musk said on the more recent earnings call that Tesla was &#8220;still working out the details of the Terafab deployment,&#8221; and that the company would be building a research fab at its factory in Austin, costing around $3 billion and &#8220;capable of maybe a few thousand wafers per month.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;SpaceX is going to take care of the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab,&#8221; Musk said on the call. <\/p>\n<p>SpaceX&#8217;s financials have been coming to light ahead of a planned public offering in the coming months. The company filed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/04\/01\/spacex-confidentially-files-for-ipo-setting-stage-for-record-offering.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">confidentially<\/a> for an IPO in April, weeks after the merger with xAI valued the combined entity at $1.75 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>Tesla and SpaceX didn&#8217;t immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n<p>WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/04\/08\/nvidia-snaps-up-capacity-as-tsmc-and-intel-ramp-us-chip-packaging.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia snaps up capacity for a key part of AI chipmaking<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/108287441-1775501155652-Photo_16.jpg\" alt=\"TSMC scrambles to bring advanced packaging to the U.S. as demand soars from the AI boom\"\/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk arrives at the federal courthouse during proceedings in the trial over his lawsuit against OpenAI in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[342,133,148,140,835,842,144,843,662,134,836,106,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-29877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-xai","8":"tag-apple-inc","9":"tag-breaking-news-technology","10":"tag-business-news","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-intel-corp","13":"tag-ishares-semiconductor-etf","14":"tag-nvidia-corp","15":"tag-spdr-sp-semiconductors","16":"tag-taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-co-ltd","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-tesla-inc","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}