Intel Corp. will join Elon Musk’s massive chip-building effort in Austin, Texas, the companies announced April 7.

The Silicon Valley chip manufacturer will help Musk’s Terafab project to “help refactor silicon fab technology,” Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan announced on X in a surprise statement.

“Our ability to design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will help accelerate Terafab’s aim to produce 1 [terawatt per year] of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics,” Tan posted on X.

SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla expect to require more than 1 terawatt (TW), or 1 trillion watts, of solar power annually, which is the amount the Terafab is designed to produce. That’s about enough energy to power 100,000 average homes for one year.

SpaceX is aiming to launch 10 million tons of mass into orbit each year, according to the Terafab website.

The plant is designed to be 100 million square feet—about 10 times larger than Tesla’s 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory in Texas. Once built, it could be the largest manufacturing facility ever and more massive than any existing tech campus today.

In his announcement of the project on March 21, Musk said the Terafab plant was “enormous by our civilizational standards” but it was still just one step in the grand scheme to take humanity to the stars.

“We inspire to be a galactic civilization,” Musk said. “One where we are out there among the stars.”

To accomplish the goal of building a city on the moon and cities on Mars, populating the solar system, and sending spaceships to other star systems, “we need to harness the power of the sun,” Musk said.

“To accomplish this very difficult goal, really requires a combination of efforts of SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla working together to create this epic Terafab project,” Musk said.

Musk spent the weekend discussing the project at Intel, according to Tan. The Santa Clara, California, corporation has major manufacturing hubs in Arizona and New Mexico and a large base of employees in Oregon.

“Elon has a proven track record of reimagining entire industries,” Tan posted on X. “This is exactly what is needed in semiconductor manufacturing today. Terafab represents a step change in how silicon logic, memory and packaging will get built in the future. Intel is proud to be a partner and work closely with Elon on this highly strategic project.”

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., on April 29, 2025. The U.S. government officially holds a 10 percent stake in Intel. (Laure Andrillon/Reuters)

Intel’s stock price rose by 2.9 percent after its partnership with Terafab was announced.

Tan became CEO in March 2025 and has scaled back construction of U.S. factories and reduced the workforce in response to recent struggles with financial, manufacturing, and production issues. The United States owns 10 percent of Intel after the Trump administration made a deal with the company last year in exchange for grant payments.

Musk didn’t provide details about the partnership in his announcement.

“Honored to work with Intel and Lip-Bu,” Musk said in a post.

SpaceX and Tesla didn’t return requests for comment about the partnership announcement.