GoKawiilElon Musk arrives at the federal courthouse during proceedings in the trial over his lawsuit against OpenAI in Oakland, California, on April 30, 2026.
Elon Musk's plans for a huge chip manufacturing plant in East Texas will cost at least $55 billion for the first phase, and up to $119 billion if the full buildout comes to fruition.
The estimated capital investment amounts were disclosed in a public hearing notice on Wednesday in Grimes County, Texas, home of the prospective facility. The notice said SpaceX, which is controlled by Musk, is seeking a property tax abatement agreement from the county.
Grimes County will hold a public hearing on June 3, to consider the proposed tax breaks.
Musk, who's also CEO of Tesla , is aiming for Terafab to be the "most epic chip-building effort ever - combining logic, memory and advanced packaging under one roof," according to a post on X last month from SpaceX, which now owns artificial intelligence company xAI. He officially launched the project in March.
The chip complex outside Austin would be designed to manufacture chips for SpaceX, xAI and Tesla, and jointly built by those companies.
In April, Intel announced it will be joining the Terafab project to help "design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale." It's the first major outside commitment for the capital-intensive foundry side of Intel's business, which to date has only manufactured chips for its own products.
During Tesla's first-quarter earnings call last month, Musk said Tesla plans to use Intel's forthcoming 14A process to produce chips at the facility. Intel's stock popped on the news and had its best month ever in April, more than doubling in value.