ASML and other key suppliers of chipmaking equipment have expedited deliveries for Terafab, the semiconductor factory Tesla and SpaceX are building in Texas. Elon Musk announced it during the live broadcast of SpaceX's third-quarter 2026 earnings call on October 20, according to Tom's Hardware and Bloomberg.
Musk thanked suppliers for accelerating equipment deliveries, but he also tempered expectations: the target for volume chip production is the third or fourth quarter of 2028, a deadline he called "very aggressive" and "highly aspirational," adding that it carries "big error bars." According to Reuters, the reference site is Gibbons Creek, Texas.
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The first concrete step comes sooner. SpaceX plans to produce its first experimental chip at its research fab in Austin around the second quarter of 2027. The overall project is a multi-billion-dollar, vertically integrated factory aiming to produce one terawatt of AI computing power per year, for xAI data centers, self-driving vehicles, Optimus robots and SpaceX's orbital data center. The plan already has an initial investment of 15.6 billion euros, announced in August (see the 9.3-million-square-metre mega-fab).
Who supplies the machines
The choice of technology matters more than the dates. Terafab will use conventional EUV lithography with Intel's 14A process, which Intel made available in April to co-develop chip fabrication. ASML is the most critical supplier: it is the world's only maker of EUV machines for volume production, at around $400 million per unit. According to unofficial sources, the first ASML scanner is expected in mid-2027, as AlexTech already reported; it is unclear whether this matches the acceleration Musk announced.
Other suppliers, including Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA and Japan's Tokyo Electron, will provide front-end processing, metrology and process-control equipment. Tesla and SpaceX are also negotiating with about ten South Korean equipment makers, including Hanmi Semiconductor for advanced packaging and HPSP for high-pressure hydrogen annealing.
The risk for Samsung and SK hynix
The project also affects more than equipment suppliers. Terafab intends to integrate logic and memory at the same site, so a major customer of Samsung and SK hynix could become a competitor. Analysts cited by the Seoul Economic Daily, however, believe the early phase could open room to expand memory supply and equipment exports.
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The project aims to reduce reliance on external foundries such as TSMC, which today make the most advanced chips for Musk's companies. If the fab meets its dates, demand for machines and components should grow in the coming years.
Musk's timetable
On compute, Musk pointed to 2.5 to 3 gigawatts of active capacity by the end of 2026, an increase of 10 gigawatts in 2027, for a total of 13 gigawatts of AI compute by the end of 2027. He also announced a training cluster of 440,000 next-generation Nvidia GPUs online by the end of the second quarter of 2027. The same reservations remain: Terafab's dates are, in the founder's own words, an ambitious goal rather than a guarantee.
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