SpaceX, the space company that also owns Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, is considering spending at least an initial $55 billion to build a semiconductor factory in Grimes County, Texas, according to a proposal posted on the county’s website.
The company estimates it could spend a total of $119 billion on the project, which will be a “multi-stage, next-generation vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing and advanced computing manufacturing facility,” according to the filing.
Musk has previously outlined plans for a project called TerraFab, and Tesla will also contribute resources. The companies are bringing chipmaker Intel into the effort to develop chips for AI servers, satellites, SpaceX’s planned space data centers, autonomous Tesla cars and robots.
The billionaire said the manufacturing facility would one day produce enough chips to power 1 terawatt of electricity a year, and argued that semiconductor makers aren’t producing chips fast enough to meet his company’s artificial intelligence and robotics needs. “We either build a Terrafab or we don’t have the chips. We need chips, so we build a Terrafab,” he wrote.
But Musk wrote in a tweet Tuesday that Grimes County, Texas, is just one of several locations the company is considering for a factory.
The filing comes amid Musk’s focus on ensuring xAI has sufficient computing power available to train and enhance Grok series AI models. He also intends to capitalize on the demand for AI computing by building data centers in space, which he cited as a major reason for combining xAI and SpaceX. The combined company is said to be valued at $1.25 trillion and is scheduled to go public in June.
