Tesla's $119 Billion Terafab Chip Plant Draws Rare Supplier Praise

Suppliers Describe Unmatched Execution Speed

Elon Musk has publicly backed the pace of work at Terafab, the chip plant Tesla and SpaceX are building in Texas, saying the project is going well. He shared the assessment on X while quoting a Tesla-focused account that summarized recent remarks from a supplier. Those remarks first appeared in a column by the Korean outlet The Elec, where a supplier executive said replies from the US side to early-morning inquiries arrive within 30 minutes to an hour, even before American working hours begin. The executive credited the turnaround to engineers who hold decision-making authority themselves, an arrangement the column describes as unlike how the chip industry's usual customers operate. An overseas equipment executive went further: “I've never seen this level of execution speed in the semiconductor industry.” According to The Elec, procurement staff from both companies also visited about 10 Korean booths at the SEMICON West trade show, and more than half of the firms behind those booths have signed nondisclosure agreements and are discussing potential supply items. The speed claims matter to shareholders of both companies because the plant is estimated to cost up to $119 billion, and it has no outside customers to share the bill. Musk's post restated the supplier's account rather than adding new cost or timeline figures, and no separate Tesla statement accompanied the comments.

A $119 Billion Fab With No Outside Buyers

Terafab is a planned chip complex in Texas that would combine logic, memory and advanced packaging under one roof. Tax filings submitted to two local school districts put the total at up to $119 billion across four phases, and state records show the applications remained incomplete weeks after corrections were requested. The stated goal within a decade is 1 million wafers a month, the silicon discs from which chips are cut, a level the column notes roughly matches Samsung's memory capacity. No fab has ever produced that volume purely for its owners' own use, and Musk has never run a chip plant, two open questions the column flags directly. Musk conceded the point from the other direction in October, admitting he has no idea how to make chips while still expecting Tesla and SpaceX to do it better than anyone. Intel joined the project as a technology partner in the spring. SpaceX, which acquired Musk's AI startup xAI in February, listed through a $75 billion IPO in June, so its new public shareholders now help carry the bill. Their payoff would be an in-house supply of AI chips; until that supply exists, Terafab remains a costly bet that its fast-moving engineers must turn into finished wafers.

COINOTAG data shows Tesla (TSLA) last trading at $399.80, down 1.36% over the past 24 hours, with the daily trend still classified as an uptrend and the 14-day RSI at 63.4. The composite scoring rates the nearest resistance at $400.89 at 87 out of 100 and the strongest support at $387.98 at 84. Today's range ran from $388.22 to $406.66, so trading has pushed through the $400.89 pivot and settled back beneath it, while the stock perpetual contract carried about $67.4 million in open interest. Holding the $387.98 floor keeps the scored uptrend intact.