Why SpaceX is Building a "Terafab"

What is Terafab? Discover Elon Musk’s massive Terafab semiconductor megafactory built by Tesla, SpaceX, and Intel.

This revolutionary vertically integrated chip plant designs, fabricates, packages, and tests advanced AI chips all under one roof to solve the global AI compute shortage.Terafab will manufacture high-performance AI inference chips including the AI5 and AI6 generations that power Tesla Full Self-Driving, Cybercab robotaxis, and Optimus humanoid robots. It also produces radiation-hardened high-power processors like the D3 series engineered for SpaceX orbital data centers and satellite constellations operating in space.

The facility targets more than one terawatt of annual AI compute capacity—far exceeding current worldwide supply—to fuel autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, and space-based computing. A prototype advanced technology fab is already under construction at Tesla Giga Texas in Austin, while the full-scale Terafab complex in Grimes County, Texas, will span over