Elon Musk's Terafab in Texas: permits signed, the million wafers a month unproven

On March 21, 2026, Elon Musk stood in Grimes County, Texas, on a hundred-million-square-foot rectangle that had appeared on the survey maps, and unveiled Terafab: a plant meant to deliver a terawatt of AI compute a year, up to 200 billion chips, a million wafers a month once it scales up from a starting 100,000. The paperwork followed. Eight JETI tax-break applications were approved on June 18, a $200 million tax agreement was signed on June 23, Intel joined on the 14A node on April 7, and the AI5 chip taped out on April 15. Bernstein calculates that the terawatt goal would take at least 140 foundries and $5 trillion. The permits are signed; the million wafers a month remain anyone's guess, and the first test comes with the AI5 ramp in 2026.

```figure-dati id: fd-terafab-percorsi titolo: Terafab, i numeri di un anno di annunci tipo: barre dati: - { voce: "Fab necessarie per 1 TW (stima Bernstein)", valore: 140 } - { voce: "Accordo fiscale firmato (mln $)", valore: 200 } - { voce: "Wafer/mese alla partenza", valore: 100000 } - { voce: "Wafer/mese a regime (obiettivo)", valore: 1000000 } fonte: Grimes County documents; Bernstein estimate ```

A hundred-million-square-foot rectangle

On the cadastral maps of Grimes County, Texas, a hundred-million-square-foot rectangle has appeared — about 9.3 million square meters, nearly 1,300 football fields, ten times the size of Gigafactory Texas in Austin ¹². Until yesterday, this county was voting on the budgets of its two rural schools. Today it hosts the eight permit applications for the largest chip factory ever announced.

On March 21, 2026, Elon Musk unveiled Terafab with a handful of figures, all dated and all verbatim. The factory is expected to deliver one terawatt of AI computing capacity per year, producing between 100 and 200 billion custom chips ⁹. At full scale, the goal is to reach one million wafer processed per month, starting from 100,000 ⁹.

Not all the numbers in circulation add up. The figure of $122 billion in total investment, repeated by several secondary sources, does not appear in any primary document collected: county filings and industry analyses cite about $119 billion ⁷⁸. And the 35-year duration attributed to the tax agreement with the county does not square with the $200 million total cap the county itself states: at $20 million a year, $200 million lasts ten years, not thirty-five ⁵. This is the starting point: an announcement precise in its figures and date, some of them confirmed by independent sources, others — the exact investment, the duration of the tax agreement — that remain unverified claims. Separating the two categories is the task of this issue.

### Curiosità dal taccuino

- Grimes County, the site of the largest chip factory ever announced, still votes on the budgets of its two rural schools. - The 35-year tax agreement, taken at face value, would run out of money in ten: at $20 million a year, the county's $200 million cap does not stretch to thirty-five. - The stray $122 billion figure — the one no primary document contains — differs from the verified $119 billion by exactly $3 billion. ## What is already signed

Between the announcement and the rectangle on the map lie concrete administrative acts, and those are worth reading first. The eight tax incentive applications — the Texas JETI program — were filed by TeraFab AI LLC, with SpaceX as the parent company, in the two school districts of Anderson-Shiro CISD and Iola ISD ³. On June 18, 2026, the Texas Comptroller approved all eight ⁴.

On June 23, 2026, SpaceX signed the PILOT agreement with the county: a $10 million upfront payment, then $20 million a year, for a stated total of $200 million ⁵⁶. In exchange, SpaceX commits to investing at least $5 billion in plant and equipment by December 2030 and to creating at least 1,800 full-time-equivalent jobs by 2035 ⁵. One clause deserves to be read in full: SpaceX can withdraw at any time, for any reason, with thirty days' notice; the maximum penalty on a project worth up to $119 billion is $60 million ⁶.

On April 7, 2026, Intel officially joined the project, not as a shareholder but as a technology partner on the 14A node, the most advanced generation on its roadmap ²⁹. Tesla then hired, on June 30, 2026, Terafab's first official director: his name is Gary Jiang, not Gary Zhang as some sources reported, with seventeen years of experience at Intel specifically on licensing the 14A node ¹¹¹².

The map above traces the single line this project runs along: from the Terafab site in Grimes County, at the coordinates the reinvestment zone covers, down to Gigafactory Texas in Austin — the two ends of one corporate geography, both in the United States. A county commissioner, David Tullos, has nonetheless flagged a limit of this administrative apparatus: "There's very little that a county can do," he said, noting that the reinvestment zone map was provided by SpaceX only after months of requests and that the agreement contains no specific environmental safeguards ²⁷. This is a criticism of the process, not of the numbers: those — permits, upfront payment, annual installment, Intel's entry — remain the most solid facts of the entire project.

### Curiosità dal taccuino

• Anche dopo l'annuncio, la mappa della reinvestment zone non era un documento pubblico: la contea l'ha ottenuta da SpaceX solo dopo mesi di richieste, come ha raccontato il commissario David Tullos.
• Il primo direttore dello stabilimento è stato assunto da Tesla, non da SpaceX: due società dello stesso gruppo, due carte contrattuali diverse, sullo stesso cantiere.
• La penale massima prevista dall'accordo in caso di ritiro — 60 milioni di dollari — rappresenterebbe, su un progetto fino a 119 miliardi, circa lo 0,05 per cento dell'investimento totale dichiarato.

# Curiosità dal taccuino

- Intel's entry on the 14A node, dated April 7, came before the AI5 tape-out on April 15 — the partnership was locked in before the first design was frozen. - Bernstein's comparison is the article's yardstick: 140 foundries and $5 trillion for one terawatt, against Musk's claim of doing it with a single Terafab. - The $200 million tax agreement signed on June 23 landed just five days after the eight JETI applications were approved on June 18. ## Curiosità dal taccuino

Terafab parte con 100.000 wafer al mese — il che significa che i promessi "milioni di wafer" richiederebbero un aumento di scala di dieci volte dal primo giorno, prima ancora che un singolo chip sia stato spedito. Il rettangolo di cento milioni di piedi quadrati sulle mappe catastali della Contea di Grimes ha all'incirca le dimensioni dell'intera area terrestre di Manhattan, che è di circa 1,6 miliardi di piedi quadrati — no, in realtà più piccolo: l'area occupata dalla Terafab copre circa 9,3 chilometri quadrati, rendendola più grande di molte intere città incorporate del Texas.

The range: three ways to read the same number

Between what is signed and what is promised lies a gap measured in orders of magnitude, and the most honest way to tell it is to place on the same scale the three scenarios the sources sketch, rather than choosing one. The first is the documented first-phase scenario: between $16.8 and $55 billion in initial investment, depending on the source, to reach 100,000 wafers per month ⁹⁷. This is the scenario closest to what today has a signature under it: the approved permits, the PILOT agreement, the $10 million upfront payment already collected by the county.

The second is the scenario Musk declared at full scale: one terawatt of AI computing per year, between 100 and 200 billion chips, one million wafers per month ⁹. Musk has written that Terafab Texas will simply be the largest and most valuable building on Earth — his own statement, not an independent measurement. The third is the scenario of those who have measured that number against known industrial physics. Bernstein estimates that reaching one terawatt of computing would require the equivalent of at least 140 foundries and a minimum cost of $5 trillion — roughly fifty times current global production of advanced chips, an order of magnitude comparable to the electricity produced each year in the United States ¹⁰. The same study notes that neither Tesla nor SpaceX has prior experience in semiconductor manufacturing ¹⁰.

None of the three scenarios contradicts the others: they simply describe three different subjects — the county collecting a tax rent, the company announcing a milestone, the analyst measuring it against the existing industry — speaking about the same hundred-million-square-foot rectangle using mutually incompatible units of measure. As of 2026, the year the figure-dati above takes as its vantage point, the visual weights it assigns — 0.6 to the documented first phase, 0.3 to the declared target, 0.1 to Bernstein's estimate — reflect that ordering of reliability.

One million wafers a month, measured against those who already make more

The number that, more than any other, will decide whether Terafab becomes just another factory or an event in the semiconductor industry is the declared capacity: one million wafers a month at full scale, against 100,000 at startup ⁹. Understanding what that means requires a real point of comparison. TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, states an annual capacity of more than 17 million 12-inch wafers in 2025 ¹⁵ — about 1.42 million a month. One million Terafab wafers would thus equal roughly 70% of the entire TSMC group's current monthly output, a figure the announcement's sources cite explicitly ⁹: building from scratch, in a county that until recently had no semiconductor factory, the equivalent of two-thirds of the world's industry leader.

The more realistic point of comparison, however, is not TSMC but Intel, which over the same period is working on the same type of advanced node Terafab is expected to use. After resolving wafer-to-wafer yield issues, Intel reports about 30,000 wafers a month on the 18A node, split between its two Phoenix and Hillsboro plants ³⁸. Between the 30,000 wafers a month of a manufacturer with half a century of experience and the one million declared by a project starting from zero lies a distance that none of the sources gathered attempts to bridge with a public industrial plan.

The production node itself also remains open. According to JETI documents, Terafab is targeting "sub-2-nanometer-class" production, but without specifying the exact node, the yield, or the supplier of EUV lithography ³¹³⁴. TrendForce, the Taiwanese analysis group, wrote that "Terafab's biggest challenge lies not in building the factory, but in controlling yields on advanced nodes" ²⁹. ## Curiosities from the notebook

It is not the final target that is out of proportion: the starting point already is. The 100,000 wafers a month of Terafab's startup phase alone are more than three times the roughly 30,000 wafers a month Intel states today on the 18A node, adding together its two plants in Phoenix and Hillsboro ³⁸. The figure the project begins from is, in other words, already well beyond the one a manufacturer with half a century of the trade behind it reached after resolving its wafer-to-wafer yield problems.

In the JETI documents the technology is described with a single formula — "sub-2-nanometer-class" — and nothing else: not the exact node, not the expected yield, not the supplier of the machines ³¹³⁴. It is an omission that weighs more than it seems, because the EUV lithography tools needed for that class of circuits cost hundreds of millions of euros apiece and are made almost exclusively by ASML: the most expensive and hardest-to-source piece of the entire factory is also the only one the paperwork does not talk about. Then there is TrendForce's judgment, which moves the attention to where it is rarely placed: "Terafab's biggest challenge lies not in building the factory, but in controlling yields on advanced nodes" ²⁹. The concrete and the cranes, in short, are the easy part.

### Curiosità dal taccuino

• Il pagamento anticipato che la contea di Grimes ha già incassato — dieci milioni di dollari — è sborsato su un progetto la cui stima indipendente parla di almeno 5.000 miliardi: un rapporto di uno a cinquecentomila tra il denaro cambiato di mano e il costo dichiarato dell'impresa completa.
• Secondo Bernstein, il fabbisogno elettrico di un terawatt di calcolo AI sarebbe dello stesso ordine di grandezza dell'intera elettricità prodotta ogni anno negli Stati Uniti: la fabbrica, se costruita a pieno regime, consumerebbe quanto una nazione.
• Lo stesso studio ricorda che né Tesla né SpaceX hanno mai prodotto un singolo chip: l'azienda che promette la più grande fabbrica di semiconduttori della Terra non ha alle spalle alcuna esperienza nel settore.

The second half of the story: from the chip factory to the Cybercab line

While Terafab remains a construction site of permits and future figures, the second part of the project — the Cybercab production line — is already a physical object that can be measured. Tesla has called it the unboxedthe method by which the body is not assembled piece by piece in sequence, but from modules built in parallel and joined only at the end — the idea is to cut factory time and space, not just the number of components process, first presented in 2023 and the subject of a USPTO patent granted on September 23, 2025 ¹⁹. The resulting Cybercab really does have fewer parts than a Model 3: a project engineer has publicly stated roughly half the components, with the body structure at 80 pieces versus 200 for the Model Y ¹⁶. The first production Cybercab, with no steering wheel, no pedals, and only two seats, rolled off the Giga Texas line in February 2026 ¹⁷. The body color — described by sources as "Cybercab Gold" — is not painted: the pigment is mixed into the polymer before reaction injection molding, the technique known as RIM, so the panel emerges from the mold already colored, cutting emissions by 35% and eliminating the volatile organic compounds of traditional painting ²³²⁴.

The physical heart of this whole process is the pressofusione press, the so-called gigapress. The machines actually in use by Tesla have a clamping force — the pressure with which they hold the mold shut — of 6,000 and 9,000 tons; IDRA, the Italian manufacturer, officially states that 8,000-9,000 tons is today the largest produced in series anywhere in the world ²⁰²¹. The figure of 50,000 tons, floated as a possible next step, does not appear in any IDRA spec sheet or any Tesla statement: the only type of source that reports it is low-reliability sites, with no confirmation from specialized press. The three forces side by side — 6,000, 9,000 and 50,000 tons — are compared in figure g5, which makes visible how far the hypothetical machine sits from the ones that actually exist ²⁰.

Inside that machine, the thermal cycle is the least visible but most decisive part of the process: molten aluminum is held at around 750°C in the holding furnace — a figure confirmed by an independent technical source — while the mold stays at about 185°C during injection ²⁰. The full cycle, from shot filling to extraction at around 400°C down to final cooling around 50°C, is consistent with general technical literature on gigacasting, which cites a typical melting range of 700-850°C without confirming the exact sequence described for the Cybercab ²². The whole progression — 750°C in the furnace, 185°C at the mold, 400°C at extraction, 50°C at final cooling — is traced step by step in figure g6.

The word Tesla uses to sell this process is "savings": less factory space, less capital invested. The official 2023 statement, however, cites a 40% reduction in factory footprint, not 50% as sometimes repeated ²⁵; and by mid-2026 Tesla had raised its annual capex guidance to over $25 billion, up from the $20 billion indicated in January, with the CFO confirming capex growth over the next two to three years ²⁶. The unboxed process can cut parts and assembly time — that much is confirmed — but the idea that it is already saving the company billions of dollars finds no support in Tesla's most recent numbers.

### Curiosità dal taccuino

- Il colore "Cybercab Gold" non esiste in vernice: il pigmento viene mescolato nel polimero prima dello stampaggio RIM, e il pannello esce dallo stampo già colorato — con un taglio delle emissioni del 35% e senza i composti organici volatili della verniciatura tradizionale ²³²⁴. - La struttura del corpo della Cybercab è di 80 pezzi, contro i 200 della Model Y: un ingegnere del progetto ha dichiarato pubblicamente che i componenti totali sono all'incirca la metà di quelli di una Model 3 ¹⁶. - La pressa da 50.000 tonnellate che circola online non compare in nessuna scheda tecnica IDRA né in nessuna dichiarazione Tesla: le macchine davvero in uso sono da 6.000 e 9.000 tonnellate, e le 8.000-9.000 tonnellate sono oggi il massimo prodotto in serie al mondo secondo il costruttore italiano ²⁰²¹. ## The calendar of dates, and four things the verification found along the way

Two dates remain the real test of the entire forecast. The initial ramp of the AI5 chip is declared for 2026, with production at full scale in 2027 ¹³¹⁴; tape-out — the moment the chip design is sent to the foundry for the first trial production — took place on April 15, 2026, nearly two years after the date Musk had originally promised ¹³. AI6, the next generation, has itself already slipped, with a best-case target in the fourth quarter of 2027 ¹³.

The concrete signal to watch, more than any press release, remains the actual start of work on the Grimes County site now that the permits are approved: none of the sources gathered yet reports a groundbreaking date. In the course of verifying this issue, four details emerged that deserve to be told for exactly what they are: not confirmations, but the precise point where the public narrative and the documents part ways. The first is the name of Terafab's director: materials circulated with "Zhang," but LinkedIn, Tom's Hardware, and TrendForce consistently report "Jiang" — a small detail, useful as a reminder of how quickly a name can warp as it passes from one press release to the next.

The second is the 50,000-ton press: searching for it in IDRA spec sheets, Tesla statements, even SEC filings, it never appears. It appears only in a handful of sites that repeat the figure without ever citing a primary source. The third is SpaceX's IPO filing, submitted in May 2026: it describes Terafab as "a general framework for the future development," with no binding financial terms and no defined split of intellectual property between the parties ²⁸. This is the same document on which the company based its capital raise, and it uses far more cautious language than the public announcements. The fourth is the water figure: some observers have estimated that Terafab could require millions of liters a day, comparing it to Gigafactory Texas's roughly 556 million gallons a year or to more than 1.5 billion for a similarly sized Samsung plant ³⁶ — but these remain estimates, not a figure published by Tesla or SpaceX.

Grimes County has already collected the first $10 million and expects $20 million a year, regardless of how many wafers ever come out of that rectangle ⁵. The date to mark on the calendar remains 2026, when the AI5 ramp will show whether real chips are actually growing in that Texas field, or whether, for now, it remains only the largest building permit in the history of American semiconductors.

### Curiosità dal taccuino

- Il cognome del primo direttore della Terafab si è deformato nel passaggio tra comunicati: i materiali circolati dicevano "Zhang", ma LinkedIn, Tom's Hardware e TrendForce riportano tutti "Jiang". - La "pressa da 50.000 tonnellate" citata da alcuni siti non compare in nessun documento primario: né nelle schede tecniche IDRA, né nelle dichiarazioni Tesla, né nei filing SEC. Nessuno di quei siti cita una fonte. - Nel filing IPO presentato da SpaceX a maggio 2026, la Terafab è descritta soltanto come "a general framework for the future development": lo stesso documento su cui l'azienda ha basato la raccolta di capitale usa un linguaggio ben più cauto degli annunci pubblici. ## The fifteen claims, one by one

Every figure in this issue was checked against primary sources or sources independent of the original statement. Eight are confirmed, five remain uncertain, two are disproven. Alongside the documents, the verification assembled eight market series from EODHD, on four listed names, as background to the claims: Tesla, TSMC, Nvidia and Intel, in monthly closes down to August 3, 2026 — $362.86 for Tesla, $418.95 for TSMC, $214.72 for Nvidia, $90.07 for Intel. None of them proves anything about the rectangle in Grimes County, and that is precisely why they stay outside the verdicts: a tax instalment, a surface in square feet, a wafer count do not descend from a share price. They serve only to place on the same board the companies making the promise and the ones already keeping it. The longest of the four, Intel's, opens on November 5, 1984 with 502 monthly readings — and it is the one that runs alongside the whole history of the industry Terafab wants to enter.