Terafab — 1M Wafers/Month Goal, Tesla 38.1% / SpaceX 61.9% JV, $45B Funding Target

What happened

The detailed ownership and production targets for the Terafab AI chip manufacturing joint venture surfaced for the first time. Per Evan N's reporting: Tesla holds 38.1% and SpaceX 61.9%. The venture has a targeted funding pool of $45 billion, is tracking 74 equipment suppliers, and aims to produce one million chip wafers per month by 2033. Phase 1 is a 25,000-chip complex in Grimes County, Texas.

For context, Tesla currently produces approximately 700,000–800,000 DRAM chips per month. One million wafers per month represents a scale far beyond any single fab's current output. If achieved, Terafab would rank among the largest individual semiconductor manufacturing operations in history.

Yue Chan reported that Tesla's procurement team visited Japanese semiconductor equipment makers in early November to begin sourcing machinery for Terafab. Major Japanese equipment suppliers (Tokyo Electron, Shin-Etsu group, etc.) are likely to be among the 74 tracked suppliers.

More detail

SpaceX's 61.9% stake makes Terafab effectively a SpaceX-led venture, consistent with Musk's statement at Baron Conference that a single Terafab plant's annual output could match the GDP of a top-20 economy. If SpaceX and Tesla control AI chip supply directly, their combined dependence on NVIDIA and third-party foundries drops substantially.

The $45B funding target is separate from the Starbase $24B supercomputer project already announced. Combined, the SpaceX–Tesla AI infrastructure investment thesis now approaches $70 billion — comparable on an individual basis to any single major hyperscaler's annual AI capex.

Phase 1 in Grimes County is in central Texas. Subsequent phases could integrate with SpaceX's Starbase, Tesla's Austin gigafactory, and Fremont, completing a vertically integrated AI supply chain on US soil.

Analyst and house views

Ron Baron directly stated at the Baron Conference that a single Terafab plant could match the GDP of a top-20 economy and values SpaceX in the multi-trillion-dollar range. No Wall Street house has officially incorporated Terafab as a competitive threat to NVIDIA in published models, but the $45B scale and SpaceX leadership structure are bringing AI chip supply diversification from hypothesis to concrete project.

investus Research