Маск: локацию чип-завода TeraFab для роботов Tesla Optimus объявят скоро

In July 2026, Elon Musk said that Tesla would soon announce the construction site for TeraFab — its own chip manufacturing plant, which the company calls critical for scaling up production of the humanoid robot Optimus.

What is known about TeraFab

TeraFab is a planned Tesla facility for mass production of semiconductors, and according to Musk, without it Optimus robot output cannot be scaled up. The company has not yet named a specific site but promises to do so soon.

• The location of TeraFab will be announced "very soon" — statement from Elon Musk (according to 财联社, Cailian Press)
• Equipment for the development facility in Austin has already been ordered
• The plant's purpose is to produce chips for the humanoid robot Optimus
• The name TeraFab itself points to a "tera"-scale of production

According to 财联社, the company has already ordered equipment for the development facility in Austin — the city where Tesla's headquarters and the Gigafactory Texas plant are located. This is a separate pilot line, not the future TeraFab itself, whose location has yet to be revealed. Tesla announced the Optimus program in 2021, and showed the first working prototypes in 2022.

Why Tesla needs its own chip plant

Tesla needs its own plant to supply Optimus robots with computing chips and to avoid depending on queues for capacity at contract manufacturers. Musk has repeatedly pointed out that access to advanced semiconductors is a bottleneck for any plans to mass-produce devices.

The logic of the project is vertical integration: its own silicon for its own products. According to Musk's earlier public statements, Tesla expects to eventually produce millions of Optimus robots per year — and at that scale, external chip supplies might simply not be enough. Hence the bet on in-house production of "tera"-scale volumes.

Global capacity for advanced process nodes — at TSMC and Samsung — is currently overloaded with orders for AI accelerators, and the wait for them is long. Tesla already designs its own chips: the computer for its autopilot (the FSD computer) and the Dojo system for training neural networks. TeraFab continues that same line but shifts the focus from development to mass production of silicon.

What TeraFab would give Optimus production

TeraFab is meant to remove the main physical constraint on mass Optimus production — the number of available chips for the robot's "brain." Every robot needs a powerful processor to process vision and control movement in real time, and when produced in the millions, the aggregate demand for silicon becomes enormous.

For now, this is an early stage: equipment has been ordered only for the pilot facility in Austin, and a site for a full-scale TeraFab has not yet been publicly chosen. Tesla has not disclosed actual volumes, launch timelines, or chip types.

The location for

TeraFab will be announced very soon, and the plant itself is critical for scaling up Optimus production.

> — Elon Musk, head of Tesla (as reported by 财联社)

What this means

Tesla is signaling that it sees chip production as the main barrier to mass robot output, and is ready to build a dedicated plant for it. If TeraFab is indeed launched, it would be a step toward full vertical integration of Tesla's robotics — from chip to finished Optimus. The move fits a broader trend: large tech companies are increasingly building or commissioning their own silicon to avoid depending on the market. For now, though, this is just an announcement of intent — with no address, budget, or timeline, there's little to go on, and the project's reality can only be judged once the location is officially announced.