SpaceX and Tesla are building a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor facility in Grimes County, Texas, that would dwarf the current record holder for the world’s largest building.
Fortune reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla are constructing Terafab, a chip manufacturing complex that Musk says will become the largest and most valuable building on Earth. “Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far. And it will be stunningly beautiful,” Musk wrote on X.
The New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, currently holds the record for the world’s largest building at about 18.9 million square feet. Terafab’s planned 100 million square feet would exceed that by more than five times. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a press release that “the first phase of the Terafab project represents a capital investment of more than $16.8 billion and will create 3,000 new jobs.”
According to the Terafab website, the facility is designed as a vertically integrated chip factory that will combine logic, memory, and advanced packaging under one roof. Both SpaceX and Tesla are expected to draw on the plant, which the site says is designed to produce more than 1 terawatt of compute annually.
“We’re now embarking on the most epic chip-building effort, combining logic, memory, and advanced packaging all under one roof,” Musk said in a press release. He framed the project as an effort to close the gap between current chip production and the demand he anticipates as humanity expands into space. “Terafab is bringing cutting-edge manufacturing to America, creating thousands of high-paying jobs,” Musk said, “and enabling us to produce AI chips at scale for use on Earth and in space.”
The Terafab website links the project to Musk’s broader vision for AI infrastructure, describing plans that include support for as many as 1 million Tesla Optimus robots, 10 million tons of mass launched into orbit annually, and more than 1 terawatt of solar power. The site also compares the planned 100-million-square-foot facility with Tesla’s roughly 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory Texas, describing Terafab as built for “terawatt scale” production.
Terafab has filed eight tax incentive applications with two local school districts, seeking to freeze school maintenance and operations property taxes at roughly 48 percent of appraised value for 10 years per phase. The company is also asking the state to cover the difference in maintenance and operations taxes and interest and sinking taxes through the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation program, known as JETI.
In the applications, the company said the tax breaks were necessary because of cost differences between Texas and other locations. “Absent the limitation, the project IRR would fall below the minimum investment threshold, and competing jurisdictions (e.g., Arizona) would present a more favorable after-tax return,” the application read, “in which case the project would likely be relocated outside Texas.”
Texas has already extended SpaceX a $30 million grant through the Texas Enterprise Fund, according to Abbott’s press release. SpaceX is headquartered in Texas and operates its Starbase launch facility and a manufacturing plant in the state. Abbott called Terafab a “first-of-its-kind” facility that would speed up chip production and create thousands of jobs. “Texas is where big ideas grow even bigger,” he said.
Read more at Fortune here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
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