Elon Musk spent quite some time last fall complaining that existing foundries cannot meet his company's demand for high-performance AI processors and proposed an idea to build his own chipmaking venture. Apparently, this was not just a brag but rather an announcement of a long-term project. Now the project has gotten its launch date: March 21, 2026.
"Terafab Project launches in 7 days," Elon Musk wrote in an X post.
He did not elaborate on any details about the project, though his previous comments indicated that this is indeed a long-lasting semiconductor production facility project that would enable his companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI — to get enough supply of AI accelerators.
Musk once mentioned that his companies might need 100 – 200 billion AI chips per year, and if it cannot get them from existing foundry partners, then the company will consider building its own fabs. Apparently, the Terafab Project seems to be the brand depicting the endeavor and scale, though it does not provide any reasonable portrayal of the nature of the project.
Speaking in an interview with Moonshots, Elon Musk argued that the semiconductor industry may be approaching cleanroom design incorrectly. Instead of keeping entire buildings ultra-clean, Musk suggested that fabs should focus on isolating silicon wafers themselves throughout the manufacturing flow, keeping them sealed from the surrounding environment at all times. He surmised that would allow him to eat cheesburgers in the cleanroom while chips were being made.
Rebuilding the whole supply chain for such fabs would take the industry a couple of decades, to say the least. For this, Musk argued that his planning horizon is closer to one to two years, and he rarely looks beyond three years, which makes the traditional semiconductor buildout cycle incompatible with his projected demand.
He added back then that if foundries could accelerate expansion and supply 100 billion to 200 billion AI chips per year within Tesla’s required timeframe, the company would gladly rely on external manufacturing instead of pursuing its own facilities.
Apparently, we are going to see details about the project in a week. The again who launces a multi-billion project on Saturday? This is what we are going to see next Saturday!
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