SpaceX and Tesla have announced plans to build a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Grimes County, Texas, called Terafab. The complex, spanning more than 100 million square feet, would become the world's largest building if completed.
Facility design and purpose
The enormous facility is designed to integrate manufacturing, packaging and testing of advanced logic and memory devices. The chips will power applications including Tesla's Optimus robots and self-driving vehicles, alongside SpaceX's planned space-based data centres.
The initial phase of the construction project alone is anticipated to cost approximately $16.8 billion. "Terafab will be epic in both its mission and in its sheer size, designed to build new compute at an unprecedented scale and speed," SpaceX said in a statement.
Supply and demand gap
"The facility will be an advanced semiconductor fab that will bridge the divide between current global chip supply and the compute demand of the future," the statement continued. "The combined SpaceX and Tesla demand for chips is expected to be in excess of 1 terawatt (TW) of compute, which is significantly larger than the current 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."
Jobs and investment
The firm said Terafab would employ more than 3,000 staff. "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," Elon Musk said in a statement.
SpaceX originally proposed investing $55 billion into Terafab, which could rise to $119 billion, according to a filing in May. In April, Tesla began construction on a research facility at the North Campus of its Giga Texas plant, describing it as a forerunner to Terafab.
Tax incentives and comparisons
Musk is seeking to utilise taxpayer funds to help cover some of the expenses linked to constructing the world's largest single property. The scheme has submitted eight tax incentive applications with the two local school districts, requesting to freeze school maintenance and operations property taxes at approximately 48% of appraised value for 10 years per phase.
The Pentagon is currently the largest building in the U.S. at 6.6 million square feet, while China's New Century Global Centre in Chengdu stands as the world's largest at 18.9 million square feet.
