Intel joins Elon Musk’s lofty Terafab endeavour

A few days ago, Elon Musk announced what is arguably his most ambitious endeavour ever: Terafab. Tesla, SpaceX and xAI want to enter the lucrative chip manufacturing business, presumably to wean off TSMC and Samsung Foundry for its chip needs. However, it will be impossible to pull off without support from existing chipmakers, and Elon may have roped in a key player: Intel.

Intel says it will produce 1 TW of chips per year- a horrible way to denote capacity. It doesn’t explicitly state how many wafers that translates to, nor does it state which technology it will employ. However, it was previously revealed that Terafab aimed to reach 160,000 wafers per month as its initial target. As for the node, it will be equivalent to 2 nm. If Intel’s production lines are used, it will likely employ the 14A node.

Whether or not Terafab will develop its infrastructure from scratch or use Intel’s existing facilities remains to be seen. Given Elon’s complete lack of experience in the field, it will probably be the latter, at least in its initial phases. And even if in-house development is achieved, other supply chain bottlenecks, such as EUV/high-NA EUV machines from ASML, will be another pressing issue. Until Terafab becomes reality, Elon will continue to rely on TSMC and Samsung Foundry for chip needs.