SpaceX last week announced that it had chosen Grimes County, Texas, outside of Houston, to build its planned semiconductor plant, which is expected to become the largest building in the world at more than 100 million square feet.
SpaceX owner, Elon Musk, in a post on X last Thursday said “Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far. And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
The factory is a joint effort with Musk’s electric car company, Tesla.
“This facility will house the manufacturing, packaging and testing of advanced logic and memory devices.
“Terafab will produce chips optimised for edge computing and inference for use in hardware like Tesla’s Optimus robots and self-driving Cybercabs, along with high-power chips designed for operating SpaceX’s space-based data centers,” SpaceX said in a press release Thursday, while Musk said the building would be “stunningly beautiful.”
SpaceX added that its and Tesla’s combined demand for chips is expected to be in excess of the global supply.
“While we are deeply appreciative of our current chip suppliers and encourage them to expand production whenever possible, this looming gulf between supply and demand is at the core of Terafab’s necessity,” SpaceX explained.
The company said Terafab would employ more than 3,000 people, adding that its initial phase is estimated to cost approximately $16.8 billion.
“The Terafab is bringing cutting-edge manufacturing to America, creating thousands of high-paying jobs in the Lone Star State and enabling us to produce AI chips at scale for use on Earth and in space,” Musk said.
SpaceX proposed initially investing $55 billion into Terafab, which could increase to $119 billion, according to a May filing.
In April, Tesla broke ground on a research facility at the North Campus of its Giga Texas plant, which it called a precursor to Terafab.
The Pentagon is the current largest building in the US at 6.6 million square feet, and China’s New Century Global Center in Chengdu is the world’s largest at 18.9 million square feet.
