Elon Musk wants his Terafab semiconductor project producing chips at scale by late 2028, but a chip analyst familiar with equipment orders believes commercially significant output may not arrive until 2030.
“I think he can do it faster than anyone else can. I don’t think he can do it fast,” Jay Goldberg, senior semiconductor analyst at Seaport Research Partners, told Benzinga in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Hours later, Musk said Terafab, a joint chipmaking project between SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), aims to produce its first working test chip in May or June 2027.
Volume production at its main Texas facility could begin in late 2028, Musk said during Tuesday’s SpaceX earnings call.
“We’re just figuring out chip fabrication,” Musk acknowledged, warning that the ambitious timetable carried considerable uncertainty.
With Tesla reporting Wednesday, traders on Kalshi’s earnings market see a 92% chance that “Terafab” will be mentioned during its call, after Musk discussed the project on SpaceX’s call Tuesday.
Kalshi and Benzinga have an existing data collaboration agreement.
Buying the Machines Is Just the Beginning
Goldberg, who co-hosts the semiconductor podcast The Circuit with Ben Bajarin, revealed Monday that he had spoken with someone receiving Terafab equipment orders.
He said the first small batch of equipment he knows about appears unlikely to arrive until 2028, and would be sufficient to train workers and learn the manufacturing process, but not operate a commercial factory.
Musk’s earlier test-chip target concerns a separate research facility in Austin.
Musk said ASML Holding (NASDAQ:ASML) and other suppliers were accelerating equipment deliveries.
“It’s not Legos, right?” Goldberg said, explaining that chipmaking requires extraordinarily precise processes and years of accumulated expertise.
“It’s one thing to be able to manufacture a chip, it’s very, very different to be able to manufacture that at commercial scale.”
Why Even Musk Faces Major Hurdles
Goldberg said Terafab initially sounded “ludicrous,” but Musk has “a better track record than most on building ludicrous things.”
Musk’s ability to recruit exceptional engineers could help, but Goldberg said semiconductor manufacturing demands specialists across numerous disciplines, from chemicals and gases to individual machines.
“The guy working on one tool doesn’t know what the guy working on the other tool does,” he explained.
Goldberg pointed to China’s struggles to catch up in advanced chipmaking, noting that even poaching thousands of experienced engineers from TSMC (NYSE:TSM) had failed to close the gap.
“I think his temptation will be to just hire the 10 best people, and that’s probably not enough,” he said.
Recruiting enough specialists is only one challenge. Financing the project is another.
Goldberg estimated a high-volume semiconductor factory costs around $30 billion and requires near-constant operation to justify the investment.
Still, he believes a functioning factory by 2028 and commercially significant output by 2030 are achievable if Musk remains committed to the project.
With Musk simultaneously investing billions in AI supercomputers, humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, Starship rockets and SpaceX’s expanding mobile network, Goldberg questioned how he could finance and manage so many ambitious projects.
“I think all of this, Terafab and all these other projects, are feasible and ambitious and doable, but they will be chiefly constrained by the allocation of his capital and his attention,” Goldberg said.
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