Terafab: Musk’s $119 billion silicon giant targets future of computing VIDEO / PHOTO

Elon Musk’s planned Terafab semiconductor complex in Texas could become one of the largest industrial facilities ever built, with a projected floor area of at least 100 million square feet (9.3 million square metres).

A new visualisation by X user Nic Cruz Patane highlights the extraordinary scale of the project. According to Tom’s Hardware, the proposed facility would have more floor space than the Pentagon, Apple Park, the Mall of America and Tesla’s Giga Texas combined.

Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.

And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026

Terafab is also projected to dwarf the New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, which has about 18.9 million square feet of interior space.

The scale reflects Musk’s ambition to create an integrated semiconductor operation rather than a conventional chip factory. The facility is expected to manufacture logic and memory chips while also bringing lithography, packaging and testing operations under one roof.

Construction activity has reportedly already begun at the Texas site, less than five months after Musk unveiled the project. However, the ultimate size, cost and production capabilities of Terafab remain subject to change as development progresses.

Musk has argued that Tesla and SpaceX will require enormous computing capacity for artificial intelligence, robotics and other applications. He has previously said the two companies could eventually need around 1 terawatt of computing power — a demand far beyond current global chip production.

The project has nevertheless drawn scepticism over its technical and financial feasibility. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, has described building such a facility as an “extremely hard” challenge.

The potential investment is also enormous. Estimates cited by Tom’s Hardware suggest Terafab could ultimately require up to $119 billion, substantially more than the roughly $16.8 billion in initial capital investment previously reported.

At the same time, Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan has expressed interest in working with Musk on unconventional approaches to chip manufacturing.

For now, Terafab remains an exceptionally ambitious project rather than an operational semiconductor powerhouse. Its reported early construction progress suggests Musk is moving ahead, but the facility's final scale, cost, technology and ability to deliver chips at the proposed level remain uncertain.