Grimes County residents crowd a public meeting to discuss SpaceX's proposed Terafab chipmaking factory.
Courtesy/Marie Egyed
It's not just data centers.Residents in a small Texas county are also now protesting SpaceX's proposed Terafab semiconductor facility in another sign of growing backlash against AI across the country.Elon Musk's rocket company has submitted proposals to build the first phase of its chipmaking moonshot, which will cost at least $55 billion, in Grimes County. It could reach $119 billion if additional phases are built. About 30,000 people live in Grimes, which is about an hour outside Houston.SpaceX's Terafab project is a joint venture with Tesla and Intel. Musk has said that, once online, it could vastly increase the global supply of semiconductor chips, which are crucial for both SpaceX's plans for AI data centers and Tesla's rollout of autonomous robotaxis and humanoid robots. Musk said in March that the factory could be as large as 100 million square feet, which would make it one of the largest factories in the world.On Tuesday, Terafab took a step toward breaking ground when the Grimes County Commissioner Court voted to award SpaceX a critical tax abatement and a reinvestment zone designation during a public meeting.The decision disappointed a notable swath of Grimes County residents who publicly criticized the project during the meeting. They opposed the project's size, potential impact on the rural community, and environmental fallout, echoing a nationwide backlash against AI data center developments."Your people don't want this. The turnout today is highly indicative that if this were put to a vote, the vast majority of people would vote it down," one man said during the meeting. "I think it's incompatible with the region."
