SpaceX may spend up to $119 billion on its ‘Terafab’ chip factory in Texas

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, which also includes his artificial intelligence company xAI, is considering spending $55 billion, at least initially, to build a semiconductor factory in Grimes County, Texas, according to SpaceX. an offer On the county website.

The company estimates it could spend a total of $119 billion on the project, which will be a “multi-phase, next-generation, vertically integrated semiconductor and advanced computing manufacturing facility,” according to the filing.

Musk has preceded shown Plans for the project, dubbed ‘Terafab’, will also see Tesla contributing resources. Companies have Chipmaker giant Intel has been involved in the effortThe company aims to develop chips for SpaceX’s proposed artificial intelligence servers, satellites and data center in space, as well as Tesla’s autonomous vehicles and robots.

The billionaire said the manufacturing facility will, at some point in the future, manufacture enough chips to provide 1 terawatt of power annually, arguing that semiconductor manufacturers are not making chips fast enough to meet his companies’ artificial intelligence and robotics needs. “We either build Terrafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build Terrafab,” he wrote.

However, musk books He tweeted on Wednesday that Grimes County, Texas, was just one of several sites under consideration for the plant.

The filing comes as Musk doubles his efforts to ensure xAI has enough computing power available to train and run the Grok series of AI models. He’s also intent on capitalizing on demand for AI computing by building data centers in space, which he cited as a big reason for integrating augmented AI with SpaceX. The combined entity is said to be worth $1.25 trillion and it is expected To go public in June.