\n
<\/p>\n
Elon Musk runs an auto company. He oversees an aerospace company. And he controls a social media outlet. Now he wants to add chipmaker to his resume.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The multi-hyphenate billionaire announced plans<\/a> over the weekend to build a chip manufacturing factory in Austin, Texas, which will produce chips for SpaceX and xAI, which recently merged. Musk, at a presentation Saturday, said the project, dubbed Terafab, will be the \u201cmost epic chip building exercise in history by far.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk has been talking about Terafab for a while, but the event on Saturday marked the official start to the project. While xAI and other artificial intelligence companies have largely depended on TSMC, Samsung and Micron for the chips that power their systems, Musk, however, said existing semiconductor manufacturers aren\u2019t making chips fast enough for his needs. He also has indicated that by building his own chip factory, his companies would be less affected by geopolitical strife.<\/p>\n (Beyond building out Grok, Musk also hopes Tesla will become a market leader in humanoid robots, which are powered by AI.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very grateful to our existing supply chain, to Samsung, TSMC, Micron and others,\u201d he said. \u201c[However,] there\u2019s a maximum rate at which they\u2019re comfortable expanding. That rate is much less than we would like.\u201d<\/p>\n Big ambitions are nothing new for Musk, but the world\u2019s richest man has a history of being overly optimistic about those goals. Tesla\u2019s full self-driving has been \u201cone year away\u201d every year since 2015. The Cybertruck was originally expected to begin production in 2021, but was delayed about two years. The Hyperloop has not materialized as a high-speed transport system and while Musk once said SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026, he now says<\/a> a Mars mission would be \u201csomewhat of a distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n Terafab is being met with some skepticism as none of Musk\u2019s companies have semiconductor manufacturing experience. Tesla, at one point, did have a chip design team, but most left the company after Musk killed the Dojo project, which was working on Tesla\u2019s custom-built supercomputer. (And even if they had stayed, chip design is a much different job than chip manufacturing.)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n