Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the two companies plan to manufacture and test about 10 chip designs a year at Terafab, a research wafer fab inside Tesla's Texas Gigafactory. According to Sina Finance, Musk said the goal is to speed up chip development, noting that a major chip can take up to two years from development to mass production.

Musk said the companies want to challenge the risk-averse mindset common in the chip manufacturing industry. He said the fab is intended to pursue high-risk, high-reward projects, and that the 10-design target refers to faster manufacturing and testing iterations rather than mass-producing 10 different chips each year.

He said the planned Texas Gigafactory research wafer fab would integrate chip manufacturing, testing, packaging, and photomask production in one building. Musk said the team could test chips, make new photomasks, and iterate new versions without interrupting the development cycle.

Musk said Tesla will initially use off-the-shelf equipment, modify it to raise capacity, and later develop custom equipment for production bottlenecks. He said the 10-design target for the research wafer fab is not the same as Terafab's overall plan, which he previously described as two factories, each producing one chip in mass production. The broader project is intended to supply chips for Tesla vehicles, Optimus humanoid robots, and a space AI data center.