"Musk Orders Terafab Equipment from Japan... Sets 2032 Target of 1 Million Wafers per Month"

Nikkei reports, citing people familiar with the matter
Long-term plan to expand production capacity shared
Tight delivery deadlines... "a goal on a completely different scale"

The Terafab project, a massive semiconductor factory initiative led by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, has reportedly presented Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturers with a detailed production plan and urged them to expedite equipment deliveries.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, listens to a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump at an event in Washington, D.C., on the 8th of last month (local time). AP-Yonhap News.

Japan's Nikkei reported on the 9th, citing people familiar with the matter, that Terafab project officials recently informally shared a long-term plan with semiconductor equipment manufacturers and others to expand production capacity to 1 million silicon wafers per month from 2032 onward. Of that total, about 700,000 wafers are expected to be allocated to memory chips and more than 300,000 to logic chips for computing.

To that end, Terafab procurement officials visited Japan early this month, held meetings with local companies, and began detailed discussions on coordinating mass-production schedules, Nikkei reported. On the 10th of last month, Kyodo News also reported that Terafab had begun placing orders with Japanese semiconductor equipment and materials manufacturers for products intended for a pilot production plant.

CEO Musk has set the second half of 2028 as the target for the start of Terafab's mass production. During SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call last month, he said, "Our goal is to begin full-scale mass production at Terafab around the third quarter of 2028," adding, "However, this is a very aggressive schedule, and actual mass production could begin in the third or fourth quarter of 2028." The semiconductors produced at Terafab are expected to be used in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and other applications.

An executive at a major equipment manufacturer described the plan to begin mass production in the second half of 2028 as "a goal on a completely different scale." It typically takes more than three years from the planning stage to mass production at a state-of-the-art semiconductor plant. Some companies have received orders with delivery deadlines just months away. "It's an unreasonable order, but we have no choice but to do what we can to meet it," a representative of one company said. An executive at another supplier, meanwhile, expressed optimism, saying, "The biggest topic in the semiconductor industry right now isn't Kioxia or Rapidus; it's Musk."

For now, a key question is whether the factory's production capacity can be fully utilized once construction is complete. Toshiya Suzuki, consulting director at market research firm Omdia, said, "With demand for semiconductors from SpaceX still uncertain, we need to see whether the factory will be able to ramp up production smoothly after construction is complete."

Meanwhile, at an investment event on the 6th, CEO Musk said that a research semiconductor plant was under construction at the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, and set a goal of cutting the development time for new semiconductors from one year to one month. "I think we can reduce a process that typically takes a year to one month," he said, adding that manufacturing technologies validated at the research plant would be applied at Terafab.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.