Terafab, the chip manufacturing joint venture between SpaceX and Tesla, is certainly aiming for an unprecedented level of vertical control over the full compute stack, one that ensures a steady and copious supply of memory and logic chips for the Optimus humanoid robots and space-based data centers.

Elon Musk's Terafab has now informed its suppliers that it is aiming for a production capacity of around 1 million wafers per month by 2032

For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Terafab is an ambitious semiconductor-focused joint venture between Tesla and SpaceX - with a hefty technological backing by Intel - that aims to eventually produce 1,000 gigawatts or 1 terawatt of AI compute per year.

The project is currently only at its nascent stage, with an investment of $16.8 billion earmarked for a semiconductor complex in Grimes County, Texas, one that would eventually expand to encompass a footprint of 100 million sq. feet.

At its heart, Terafab aims to tackle the fragmentation that has become a hallmark of semiconductor fabrication over the past few decades by bringing all disparate processes under a single roof, including mask generation and lithography, advanced chiplet packaging, and testing, thereby reducing the chip design loop from the current 6 - 9 months to mere weeks.

Now, as per the reporting by Nikkei, Terafab recently informed its semiconductor equipment suppliers that it is aiming for a production capacity of 1 million wafers per month by 2032, divided between 700,000 wafers per month for memory and the remaining 300,000 wafers per month for logic chips.

To put this scale into perspective, Samsung's total DRAM capacity currently hovers between 650,000 and 700,000 wafers per month. Of course, unlike Samsung, Terafab is the proverbial 'new kid on the block.' As such, it would be nothing short of a veritable feat should it manage to meet Samsung's current scale in just around six years from now.

Meanwhile, after Elon Musk denigrated TSMC as a mere 'subcontractor,' Terafab is now reportedly renegotiating the terms of its possible partnership with the Taiwan-based contract chip manufacturer, aiming to iron out the residual sticking points, including the operational control hierarchy and the magnitude of investments. Do note that Musk previously ruled out the possibility of the Taiwanese firm having a stake in, or owning and running the Terafab. Finally, bear in mind that Terafab also intends to leverage Intel's 14A process for its logic chips.

About the author: Rohail Saleem reports on the business of AI and semiconductors for Wccftech: the chips, data centers and compute deals behind companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC, OpenAI and Anthropic, and what those deals mean for the hardware people buy. He has written more than 2200 articles for Wccftech since 2019, often reading earnings reports, supply-chain data and analyst notes to explain where the money and the hardware are going. He holds a commerce degree from the University of Toronto's Rotman Commerce program.

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