Intel has announced that it’ll assist Elon Musk design and construct his proposed Terafab in Austin, Texas, a three way partnership between Musk’s firms like SpaceX, Tesla and xAI to fabricate the chips essential to energy varied AI tasks. Musk announced Terafab in March 2026 with the plan of finally making a terawatt of computing energy every year.
Whereas Tesla and SpaceX have expertise manufacturing within the US, chip fabrication vegetation like those Intel runs are costly and time-consuming to construct. Offloading the duty of really constructing the Terafab from Musk’s firms to Intel is sensible. “Our capability to design, fabricate, and bundle ultra-high-performance chips at scale will assist speed up Terafab’s intention to supply 1 TW/yr of compute to energy future advances in AI and robotics,” Intel stated in its announcement.
Musk’s plan to supply chips is a component of a bigger refocusing of his varied firms round AI. For instance, Tesla has gone from an electrical automotive firm to a robotics company, and SpaceX is now one of several aerospace companies hoping to launch AI data centers into space. Making these intentions much more clear, SpaceX additionally acquired Musk’s AI company xAI in February 2026 and now reportedly plans to go public.
Intel is in a barely higher place now than it was a yr in the past due to the launch of its new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips and direct investment from the US government in August 2025, however the firm has plenty of its own issues to iron out. It’s additionally nonetheless working to get two separate chip fabs in Arizona working at full capability, a mission it originally announced in 2021.
