Musk's empire goes all-in on US manufacturing: Terafab phase one tops $16.8B
XFreeze · x · 2026-09-09
A rundown of how Musk's companies are pulling critical manufacturing back to the US:
- Tesla: Giga Texas builds Model Y/Cybertruck/Cybercab plus 4680 cells; Fremont is becoming the Optimus hub; a Gulf Coast lithium refinery now supplies 4680 cells; Megafactory Texas has started Megapack 3 output with up to 50 GWh/year design capacity.
- SpaceX: Bastrop produces Starlink hardware and is set to become North America's largest PCB facility by year-end; Starfactory is designed for up to 1,000 Starships per year.
- AI compute: Memphis Colossus is among the largest AI clusters ever, targeting 1 million GPUs.
- Terafab: Tesla and SpaceX are entering chipmaking itself — phase one alone tops $16.8B in capex, with 100M+ sq ft planned spanning logic, memory and advanced packaging.
The author's thesis: whenever a critical technology becomes a bottleneck, Musk verticalizes and builds it himself.
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