Joe Hansen(@joehansen):I see the $16.8 billion first phase as the down payment. A trillion-dollar factory only looks insane if you price the building. Elon just priced the output. One terawatt of silicon a year. At that rate the plant is still cheap. Current world supply is in the tens of gigawatts. He is talking about jumping the unit by about 50x. Optimus, Cybercab and orbital compute do not run on leftover foundry slots. They run on that extra silicon. The trillion is what the line is worth if the volume shows up. That is why he can say the ROI is still incredible.

2026.08.29 20:29

I see the $16.8 billion first phase as the down payment. A trillion-dollar factory only looks insane if you price the building. Elon just priced the output. One terawatt of silicon a year. At that rate the plant is still cheap. Current world supply is in the tens of gigawatts. He is talking about jumping the unit by about 50x. Optimus, Cybercab and orbital compute do not run on leftover foundry slots. They run on that extra silicon. The trillion is what the line is worth if the volume shows up. That is why he can say the ROI is still incredible.

Elon Musk@elonmusk

2026.08.29 19:55

@l_lucullus @wintonARK Yes, Terafab will be over a trillion dollars long-term if it achieves a terawatt/year of silicon, but that would still be an incredible ROI