Elon Musk said during a live SpaceX earnings call on October 20 that ASML and other critical semiconductor equipment suppliers have accelerated deliveries for Terafab, the planned Tesla-SpaceX chip factory. He outlined a target for volume production at the project's primary site in Gibbons Creek, Texas in the third or fourth quarter of 2028, while cautioning that the schedule is ambitious and carries "big error bars."
Terafab is designed as a vertically integrated facility making logic, memory, and advanced packaging in one location, using EUV lithography and Intel's 14A manufacturing node. ASML is the sole commercial supplier of the $400 million EUV systems needed for leading-edge production. According to unofficial reports, Terafab's first EUV tool was slated for delivery in mid-2027, though it is unclear whether that is the expedited timeline Musk referenced. Other suppliers include Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA, Tokyo Electron, and several South Korean equipment makers.
Musk also said SpaceX and xAI are procuring next-generation NVIDIA systems, including a 440,000-GPU "Vera Rubin" training cluster expected by the end of Q2 2027, and predicted 13 GW of AI compute by the end of 2027. He boasted that Terafab's output value, once fully scaled, would rank among the top 20 global country GDPs from a single building. Skeptics note the scale: Gartner estimates global AI-optimized data center capacity at roughly 44 GW in late 2026, only about 4.4% of Terafab's planned 1 TW-per-year output.