Tesla's Terafab project is designed to meet Elon Musk's huge demand for chips in the fields of space, artificial intelligence and robotics. It has recently hired a senior fab manager from Intel to join. Intel is Tesla's key partner on the Terafab project and will provide foundry support for the project with its 14A process technology. According to Musk’s previous statement, Terafab’s overall project cost is approximately US$20 billion, and its production capacity planning is mainly located in California and Texas.
According to public information, Tesla’s first important executive recruitment for Terafab is Gary Jiang, a veteran in semiconductor manufacturing. He updated his job title on his LinkedIn profile as "Director Tera Fab (Terafab Director)" and is based in Austin, Texas, starting in June 2026. This also means that Tesla’s core management team in the chip manufacturing landscape has begun to take shape, and Terafab has moved further from the concept stage to implementation.
The scale of capital investment in the Terafab facility is extremely large. In a public hearing notice submitted by SpaceX to Grimes County, Texas, where the project is located, the rocket company detailed Terafab's construction plans. The document mentioned that SpaceX plans to build a "multi-stage, next-generation, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing and advanced computing chip factory" and said that the project will become a "transformative investment" in improving domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities in the United States. According to the description submitted by SpaceX, the capital investment in the initial phase of the project is expected to be US$55 billion. If more construction phases are added later, the total investment scale is expected to reach a maximum of US$119 billion.
Before joining Tesla, Gary Jiang worked at Intel for nearly 18 years and was deeply involved in the construction and operation of multiple fabs. His most recent position was as the plant director of Intel's Arizona factory, where he was responsible for preparing the plant and capacity for the upcoming deployment of the 18A process production line. In his earlier experience, he managed Intel's 22nm and 14nm high-volume manufacturing production lines and accumulated rich practical experience in large-scale mass production, yield ramping and process switching. This resume has given him a mature methodology in building and revamping chip manufacturing plants, and is regarded as an important complement to the Terafab project.
The industry generally believes that Jiang’s many years of factory management experience at Intel was one of the key reasons for his appointment as director of Terafab. More importantly, his former employer Intel is also a partner of Tesla and SpaceX on the Terafab project and will provide foundry support for the 14A process technology for the project. Therefore, Jiang’s familiarity with Intel’s internal processes, technology nodes and communication mechanisms is expected to play a bridging role in the collaboration process between Intel and Terafab, helping both parties achieve smoother technology and management docking in the advancement of complex projects.
At the same time, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan also publicly expressed his positive attitude towards cooperation with Musk. He said in a podcast earlier this month that he and Musk both believe that current global semiconductor manufacturing capabilities have not yet fully caught up with the computing power demands brought about by artificial intelligence. Chen Li said that he and Musk will "learn a lot together" in the Terafab cooperation, and hinted that the project is expected to have an important impact at the chip supply chain level.