SpaceX, Elon Musk’s area firm that additionally homes his AI firm, xAI, is contemplating spending $55 billion, not less than initially, to construct a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Grimes County, Texas, based on a proposal on the county web site.
The corporate estimates it could spend a complete of $119 billion on the challenge, which might be a “multi-phase, next-generation, vertically built-in semiconductor manufacturing and superior computing fabrication facility,” based on the submitting.
Musk has beforehand outlined plans for the challenge, dubbed “Terafab,” that may also see Tesla contributing sources. The businesses have roped chipmaking giant Intel into the effort, aiming to develop chips for AI servers, satellites, SpaceX’s proposed knowledge middle in area, in addition to autonomous Tesla automobiles and robots.
The billionaire has mentioned the manufacturing facility will, someday sooner or later, manufacture sufficient chips to supply 1 Terawatt of energy per yr, arguing that semiconductor producers aren’t making chips shortly sufficient for his corporations’ synthetic intelligence and robotics wants. “We both construct the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we want the chips, so we construct the Terafab,” he wrote.
Nonetheless, Musk wrote in a tweet on Wednesday that Grimes County in Texas was solely certainly one of a number of places into account for the manufacturing facility.
The submitting comes as Musk has doubled down on guaranteeing xAI has sufficient computing energy obtainable to coach and energy its Grok sequence of AI fashions. He’s additionally intent on capitalizing on the demand for AI compute by constructing knowledge facilities in area, which he has cited as an enormous motive for combining xAI with SpaceX. The mixed entity is claimed to have a valuation of $1.25 trillion and is expected to go public in June.
