Texas announces SpaceX's $16.8B first phase of Terafab in Grimes County, a 100-million-sq-ft chip campus with 3,000 jobs
On Aug 6, 2026 Governor Greg Abbott announced that SpaceX will build the first phase of Terafab, a vertically integrated chip plant for logic, memory and advanced packaging, in Grimes County, Texas, with over $16.8B of capital investment and 3,000 jobs, backed by a $30M Texas Enterprise Fund grant. County filings had discussed ~$55B initially and up to $119B across all phases.
Key facts
- First phase: >$16.8B capital investment, 3,000 new jobs, a 100-million-square-foot campus on the site of a former power plant (Gibbons Creek) (Governor's office; Manufacturing Dive)
- Incentives: $30M Texas Enterprise Fund grant; qualified under the JETI program
- Musk: the project is 'the most epic chip-building effort' and will 'produce AI chips at scale for use on Earth and in space'
- Chips for Tesla's Optimus robots and Cybercab and SpaceX's planned space-based data centers
- Earlier county filings (May 2026): ~$55B initial outlay, up to $119B across all phases (TechCrunch via Wikipedia); September state filings list construction from Dec 1, 2026 to end-2028
What happened
Terafab's permanent home moved from the Giga Texas campus in Austin to a much larger rural site in Grimes County, with state money behind the first phase.
Why it matters
It turned Terafab from a keynote promise into a sited, state-subsidised project with a construction timeline, the scale that later drew TSMC's interest.
Changelog
- 2026-10-05: created (backfill from the leads queue)
People
Related events
- Musk launches Terafab, a $20–25B Tesla–SpaceX–xAI AI chip fab project in Austin aiming at 1 terawatt of compute a year ★★★
- Intel joins Musk's Terafab as manufacturing partner; Musk later says Terafab will use Intel's 14A process, Intel's first big external 14A customer ★★★
- Musk confirms TSMC talks over Terafab, the Tesla–SpaceX AI chip fab in Texas ★★★
Sources (4)
- officialOffice of the Texas Governor: Governor Abbott announces SpaceX expansion in Grimes County
- pressManufacturing Dive: SpaceX to invest $16.8B on first phase of Terafab project
- pressKBTX: Gov. Abbott confirms SpaceX expansion in Grimes County (Aug 6, 2026)
- discussionWikipedia: Terafab
id: 2026-08-06-terafab-grimes-county-16-8b · updated 2026-10-05 · open in the interactive timeline