Terafab

Elon Musk is at it again. Now he wants to build a gigantic semiconductor manufacturing plant in SE Texas which he claims will be the largest building in the world. I have friends who live in the area, only a few miles away and they are pissed. Musk ran me and my wife out of South Padre Island with his earth-shaking rockets, and now my friends might have to move from where they've lived for the past 15 years. 

This article appeared in The Texas Reporter, a left-leaning site that riles up lots of people, because this is Texas.

THE LARGEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD IS BEING BUILT IN GRIMES COUNTY, TEXAS

And when they say large, they mean something on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.

The image here is a rendering of Terafab, the enormous semiconductor manufacturing complex planned by SpaceX and Tesla near Gibbons Creek Reservoir in Grimes County, east of Bryan-College Station.

HOW BIG IS THIS THING?

The announced vision is roughly 100 MILLION square feet of floor space.

For comparison, the New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China, generally recognized as the world’s largest building by floor area, has about 18.9 million square feet.

So if Terafab reaches its announced size, it would be more than five times larger than the current record holder.

This isn’t really one gigantic warehouse. Renderings depict a sprawling industrial campus of enormous interconnected structures.

WHAT ARE THEY ACTUALLY GOING TO DO THERE?

Make computer chips. Lots and lots of them.

Terafab is supposed to be a vertically integrated semiconductor operation, bringing together logic chips, memory and advanced packaging rather than relying on a long chain of separate suppliers and facilities.

Those chips are intended to feed the enormous computing needs of Musk’s companies, including Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles and SpaceX’s plans for advanced computing infrastructure.

The basic idea is that Tesla and SpaceX expect to need so much computing power that Musk doesn’t want their future dependent entirely on outside semiconductor manufacturers.

WHY GRIMES COUNTY?

The site is around Gibbons Creek Reservoir, roughly 15 to 20 miles east of Texas A&M University.

This is another piece of an extraordinary concentration of Musk-related operations in Texas, alongside Tesla’s enormous Austin-area factory and SpaceX operations in Starbase, Bastrop and McGregor.

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

Here’s where the numbers get really wild.

The announced first phase represents an investment of about $16.8 billion and is expected to create roughly 3,000 jobs.

Earlier Grimes County documents described $55 billion in initial phases and as much as $119 BILLION in total capital investment if all contemplated phases are constructed.

That would put this in an entirely different category from an ordinary factory development.

IT WILL NEED A LOT OF POWER

County documents indicate the complex could include semiconductor manufacturing, AI facilities and natural-gas-fired power generation associated with the operation.

That matters because advanced chip manufacturing and AI computing require staggering amounts of electricity.

TAX INCENTIVES ARE PART OF THE STORY

Grimes County approved a reinvestment zone, a Chapter 312 tax abatement and a Chapter 381 economic development agreement for SpaceX.

SpaceX committed to billions of dollars in investment and the creation of thousands of jobs as the project develops. Local school districts have also considered major tax incentives connected with the development.

AND YES, THERE IS LOCAL OPPOSITION

For people who actually live in Grimes County, this isn’t simply a cool giant-building story.

Residents have raised questions about water consumption, electricity, roads, noise, light pollution, environmental effects, tax incentives and what an industrial development of this magnitude could do to the character of a rural Texas county.

Supporters see thousands of jobs, billions of dollars of investment and an opportunity to make Texas one of the most important semiconductor manufacturing centers on Earth.

Critics want considerably more scrutiny of what taxpayers and the surrounding community will be giving up in return.

Either way, the scale is almost absurd.

If the full vision actually gets built as announced, people could someday point to rural Grimes County, Texas, and say:

That’s where the largest building on planet Earth is.

The Texas Reporter