{"id":76494,"date":"2026-08-07T10:01:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/tesla-spacex-pick-texas-site-for-musks-16-8b-chip-plant\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T10:01:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:01:29","slug":"tesla-spacex-pick-texas-site-for-musks-16-8b-chip-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/tesla-spacex-pick-texas-site-for-musks-16-8b-chip-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla, SpaceX Pick Texas Site for Musk&#8217;s $16.8B Chip Plant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News )<\/b><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"@container mb-[25px] rounded-sm overflow-clip py-0.5 pr-0.5 pl-2.5 bg-success-100\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col gap-m overflow-clip rounded-[6px] !bg-success-10 p-3 @[420px]:p-m\">\n<h2 class=\"m-0 flex items-center gap-s text-[19px] !text-[#1c1c1c] md:text-[20px]\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"16\" height=\"10\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 10\" fill=\"none\" class=\"shrink-0 text-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><path d=\"M1 1.5h14\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\"\/><path d=\"M1 8.5h10\" stroke=\"currentColor\" stroke-width=\"2.5\" stroke-linecap=\"round\"\/><\/svg><span>Key Takeaways<\/span><\/h2>\n<ul class=\"m-0 flex list-none flex-col gap-m pl-0\">\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">Tesla and SpaceX will make an initial $16.8 billion investment to begin building the Terafab chip plant.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">he companies relocated the project from Austin to Grimes County, Texas, with total spending potentially reaching $119 billion.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"m-0 flex items-start gap-s !text-[#434248]\"><span class=\"mt-2 size-2 shrink-0 rounded-full bg-success-100\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><span class=\"text-body\">SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC and Tesla holds 11,509 BTC, tying Musk\u2019s chip ambitions to his companies\u2019 crypto bets.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>A Site Change for the Largest Building on Earth<\/h2>\n<p>Musk first unveiled Terafab in March at Austin\u2019s Seaholm Historic Power Plant, pitching it as a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, the AI startup SpaceX absorbed in an all-stock deal earlier this year (with Musk serving as chief executive of all three companies). That original plan floated Austin\u2019s Giga Texas campus as the likely build site, with an early cost estimate of $20 billion to $25 billion.<\/p>\n<p>This week, Tesla and SpaceX <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/08\/06\/tesla-and-spacex-will-invest-16-8b-to-start-building-terafab-chip-factory-in-texas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">formally confirmed<\/a> the project is instead heading to Grimes County, Texas, north of Houston, with an initial construction investment of $16.8 billion. Company filings suggest the total cost across multiple build-out phases could climb as high as $119 billion.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_837519\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-837519\" style=\"width:693px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-837519\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image source: X<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Musk has described the facility as \u201cthe largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,\u201d a claim that is not far-fetched, given that the building is set to house more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space. It would be roughly 10 times larger than Tesla\u2019s existing Gigafactory Texas, integrating chip design, fabrication, packaging, and testing at a single site.<\/p>\n<h2>Built to Feed an AI Compute Race<\/h2>\n<p>Terafab\u2019s purpose is narrower than its size suggests, i.e. producing advanced chips for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads across Musk\u2019s companies. The plant is designed to reach roughly 1 terawatt of AI compute output per year, manufacturing about 1 billion full-reticle chip equivalents annually, each capable of roughly 1 kilowatt of compute (a figure that does not currently exist anywhere in the chip industry).<\/p>\n<p>Those chips are earmarked for edge computing and inference tasks across Tesla\u2019s Optimus humanoid robots and its Cybercab autonomous vehicles, as well as higher-power chips built for SpaceX\u2019s ambitions in orbital data centers. Bitcoin.com News reported last month that <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/musk-space-data-centers-scale-spacex\/\">Musk has argued<\/a> space is \u201cthe only way to scale\u201d artificial intelligence, as SpaceX targets 1 gigawatt of compute capacity in orbit by 2027.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, it bears mentioning that Intel joined the project as a contributing partner earlier this year, contributing to a facility that will create at least 3,000 jobs across Grimes and neighboring Brazos County. SpaceX has committed to drawing water from the Gibbons Creek Reservoir rather than competing with the surrounding region for groundwater (another issue that has drawn scrutiny for other large U.S. data center and chip projects).<\/p>\n<h2>Musk\u2019s Bitcoin-Heavy Balance Sheets<\/h2>\n<p>The Terafab announcement lands as both Tesla and SpaceX continue to hold sizable bitcoin (BTC) treasuries, a detail that keeps Musk\u2019s ventures on the radar of crypto markets even when the news itself is about chips rather than coins. SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC, worth roughly $1.29 billion, while Tesla holds another 11,509 BTC, together making Musk\u2019s companies among the largest corporate bitcoin holders in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>That said, earlier this week SpaceX\u2019s bitcoin stash <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/featured\/spacex-earnings-bitcoin-540-million\/\">shed roughly $540 million<\/a> in value even as the company\u2019s core launch business topped forecasts. A project on the scale of the Terafab, funded in part by two companies still carrying meaningful bitcoin exposure, shows just how tightly Musk\u2019s AI ambitions and his crypto holdings have become intertwined, even if the two rarely make headlines together.<\/p>\n<p>Neither Tesla nor SpaceX has said whether Terafab\u2019s construction budget will draw on their bitcoin holdings directly, and both companies have historically treated their BTC treasuries as long-term balance sheet assets rather than a funding source for operating expenses. Still, the sheer size of the $16.8 billion initial commitment, with billions more potentially following in later phases, means investors will likely scrutinize how Tesla and SpaceX plan to finance Terafab without disrupting their existing crypto and cash positions.<\/p>\n<p>Construction on the Terafab is expected to begin in the coming months, with Tesla and SpaceX not claiming that the plant is critical for an AI compute buildout that both companies argue current global chip manufacturing capacity cannot support.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/featured\/tesla-spacex-terafab-grimes-county-texas\/\">Source link <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News ) Key Takeaways Tesla and SpaceX will make an initial $16.8 billion investment to begin building the Terafab chip plant. he companies relocated the project from Austin to Grimes County, Texas, with total spending potentially reaching $119 billion. SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC and Tesla holds 11,509 BTC, tying Musk\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3947362404,"featured_media":76495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3947362404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}