Elon Musk waves to the crowd during the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026. <\/p>\n
Denis Balibouse | Reuters<\/p>\n
SpaceX and Tesla<\/a> will build two advanced chip factories at a sprawling facility in Austin, Texas, one to power cars and humanoid robots, and another designed for artificial intelligence data centers in space, CEO Elon Musk<\/a> said on Sunday.<\/p>\n The comments followed Musk’s announcement a day earlier of plans to build “Terafab,” an advanced AI chip complex in Austin.<\/p>\n “Terafab will technically be two fabs, each making only one chip design,” Musk wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n Musk has previously said Tesla would need to build its own AI chip plant<\/a>, but the involvement of SpaceX had not been disclosed. SpaceX, which is preparing for a public listing that could value the company at around $1.75 trillion, recently merged with Musk’s social media and artificial intelligence firm xAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips,” Musk said during a presentation in an Austin facility on Saturday, adding current global chip production would meet only a small fraction of his companies’ future needs.<\/p>\n Musk did not give a timeline for the new project. Musk has a track record of announcing highly ambitious projects, though several have faced delays or fallen away.<\/p>\n Musk said he was grateful to existing chip suppliers, naming Samsung<\/a>, TSMC<\/a> and Micron<\/a>, but said demand from his companies would eventually exceed total global chip output.<\/p>\n Terafab will eventually produce one terawatt of computing capacity a year, compared with about half a terawatt currently generated across the United States, Musk said.<\/p>\n He said one chip would be used in Tesla vehicles and Optimus humanoid robots, while the second would be designed for AI satellites in space.<\/p>\n “We need a high\u2011powered chip designed for space that takes into account the harsher environment,” Musk said, adding it would need to operate at higher temperatures.<\/p>\n