<\/p>\n
The Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Wednesday, April 22, 2026.<\/p>\n
Jay Janner\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n
A company tied to\u00a0SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his effort to build the world\u2019s largest computer chip-making plant is planning renovations at the\u00a0Seaholm Power Plant downtown.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The $5.2 million project is in the works by Wit Tech LLC<\/a>, a California company linked to SpaceX and its ambitious project to build what Musk has dubbed Terafab.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Austin American-Statesman earlier reported the company had a lease<\/a> for 35,000 square feet of space at\u00a0Seaholm, the historic former power plant that was also the venue Musk chose this spring to announce his idea for\u00a0Terafab.<\/p>\n According to a new state filing<\/a>, Wit Tech is planning interior office renovations in a 35,000-square-foot space at\u00a0Seaholm, with work expected to be completed by the end of the year.<\/p>\n The plans arrive as activity picks up on plans for Terafab. Since Musk\u2019s initial announcement, Wit Tech, which shares a Palo Alto, Calif., address associated with SpaceX subsidiary xAI, has entered contracts to acquire more than 6,000 acres near College Station in Grimes County as the site for\u00a0Terafab.<\/p>\n Soon after, the Grimes County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to grant the company a tax increment reinvestment zone and tax breaks<\/a> for the $55 billion project. Since then, two Grimes County school districts<\/a> gave their approval for property tax cuts under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation program. Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to approve them later.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Though the main site is well east of\u00a0Austin, the city is also expected to be a critical site for Terafab. When announcing the project earlier this year, Musk said it would start off with an advanced technology fabrication site\u00a0in Austin.<\/p>\n Construction on the research plant began almost immediately after Musk\u2019s announcement at\u00a0Gigafactory Texas.<\/p>\n Downtown Austin\u2019s potential role<\/p>\n Now, downtown Austin is emerging as a possible site for work tied to\u00a0Terafab, which also involves Tesla Inc. and xAI, SpaceX\u2019s artificial intelligence startup. According to reports from commercial real estate firms\u00a0Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE, at least part of the Seaholm site is\u00a0a sublease of space\u00a0formerly occupied by Athena Health<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Musk hasn\u2019t commented on downtown Austin\u2019s part in the project. The building\u2019s owner, Clarion Partners, and STG Designs, the firm listed for the renovations in the state filing,\u00a0did not respond to requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk, though, has regularly touted his plans for Terafab, recently saying that SpaceX will launch the first AI satellites next year<\/a> and begin doing so at large scale in about two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The prospect of the massive project, which Musk has indicated could grow to 100 million square feet, is facing pushback in Grimes County, though.\u00a0During a recent Iola school board meeting<\/a>,\u00a0residents voiced concerns about potential ballooning school class sizes and past safety issues involving SpaceX, referencing SpaceX\u2019s sonic booms at its rocket engine testing site in\u00a0McGregor<\/a> and environmental violations<\/a> at Starbase in South Texas, where it\u2019s developing and launching its Starship mega-rocket.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIn my opinion, there is a track record of some outside influences with SpaceX coming in and some very negative things that could happen to our environment and our peaceful living that we\u2019re all accustomed to and that we want to hold on to,\u201d a public commenter said at a July school board meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Jay Janner\/Austin American-Statesman A company tied to\u00a0SpaceX CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,5454],"class_list":["post-375297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-saen_share"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}