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Elon Musk has announced plans to manufacture chips for SpaceX and Tesla that will be used to power cars, robots, and artificial intelligence data centres in space.
The proposed ‘Terafab’ facility will be built near Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, the billionaire said on Saturday, according to Bloomberg.
It will focus on producing two types of chips: one for cars and humanoid robots, and a second for SpaceX and xAI’s use in developing space data centres. “Terafab will technically be two fabs [chip fabrication facilities], each making only one chip design,” Musk said in a post on X.
Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla, has said the existing chip manufacturing industry is not supplying chips fast enough to meet the needs of his projects.
“We either build the Terafab, or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab,” Musk said at the announcement in Austin, Reuters reported.
‘Terafab’ aims to produce one terawatt of power a year, approximately double the amount of power currently generated in the United States per year, according to Musk.
He also outlined plans to produce chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts of power per year and others that can support a terawatt of power in space. He did not specify any timelines for the facility or these outputs.