JAKARTA - New ambitions come from Elon Musk. The technology billionaire plans to build a giant chip manufacturing facility called "Terafab" with an investment value of up to 20 billion US dollars or around Rp. 337 trillion.
The project will be built near Tesla's headquarters in Austin, Texas. The goal is not to directly challenge semiconductor giants such as TSMC or Samsung Electronics, but to meet the needs of Musk's own company's internal chips, including Tesla and SpaceX.
Terafab: Chip Crisis Solution for Tesla and SpaceXIn his statement, Musk confirmed that the need for chips for his business continued to increase, while global supply was not considered able to keep up.
The concept of "Terafab" is designed as a very large-scale production facility, even claiming to be the largest in the world. By building its own chip supply chain, Musk wants to reduce dependence on third parties while accelerating innovation in the electric vehicle sector and space exploration.
However, this project is not without challenges. The semiconductor industry is known as one of the most complex and expensive sectors in the world. To produce advanced chips, EUV lithography machines are needed that are only produced by ASML - with prices reaching hundreds of millions of dollars per unit.
In addition, the construction of facilities like this requires high-level experts and years before it can operate fully. Even big players like TSMC and Samsung take a long time to expand their production capacity in the United States.
On the other hand, Musk's move comes amid a push by the US government to strengthen domestic chip production, including through tariff policies and industry incentives.
Although Elon Musk has no direct background in the semiconductor field, his track record shows the courage to take big steps in a complex sector. The question now is not about vision - but whether this ambition can really be realized, or will it just be the next "crazy" project that is difficult to realize.
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