Since the beginning of this month, there has been a lot of exciting news about TeraFab, the chip manufacturing plant under Elon Musk's supervision that will be operated by his technology companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.
Earlier this month, we reported that Intel announced a partnership with TeraFab to channel their semiconductor chip manufacturing technology knowledge and capabilities to TeraFab when it begins operations.
Elon Musk has apparently revealed new information about this partnership, and said that when it begins operations, as early as 2029, TeraFab will use Intel's 14A (1.4nm) semiconductor chip manufacturing technology to produce future AI processing chips for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.
He also said that Tesla and SpaceX will be responsible for operating aspects of the TeraFab factory. In the initial phase, a small-scale chip research and production center will be built first, and Tesla will be responsible for the chip research and small-scale production experimentation (several thousand AI chips per month) which is expected to cost $3 billion.
This chip experiment and chip production will be the basis for the actual TeraFab chip production factory when it is operational around 2029, where the Intel 14A semiconductor chip production process will be used to produce AI processing chips, and this part will be operated by SpaceX.
The use of the Intel 14A process is also seen as an interesting step and decision, because semiconductor chip manufacturing companies such as Intel, TSMC and Samsung are very concerned about keeping the secret of this semiconductor chip production technology. It is expected that the technology will be licensed by Intel, where the production equipment will be delivered and installed by Intel itself before it starts operating.
The confirmation of the use of the Intel 14A process is also seen as quite interesting because Intel itself is still developing and testing the process. Intel is currently using the 18A (1.8nm) process to produce the Intel Core Ultra 300 Panther Lake series of processors and the Intel Nova Lake series of processors that will be introduced later this year.
