SpaceX said this week that it will build natural gas power plants to supply electricity to the Terafab semiconductor factory it plans to build in Texas, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Riley Trettel, who leads energy and data center development for SpaceX, said in a public meeting on Wednesday that his company will be “bringing our own power” for the project, which will also include “very large battery arrays.”
Notably absent from the Bloomberg report — and other SpaceX announcements related to Terafab — is any mention of terrestrial solar power for the facility. Tesla, which is also a solar developer, is a partner in the project.
Despite his investments in solar power, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has bet heavily on natural gas lately. The xAI data centers in Memphis run almost exclusively on the fossil fuel. Musk also recently bought a company that specializes in natural gas power plants, and SpaceX has said it plans to buy $2.8 billion worth of gas turbines over the next three years.
Terafab will be built in Grimes County, which is about 45 miles northwest of downtown Houston. SpaceX, which recently went public in an IPO that raised $87.5 billion, received a 100% tax abatement from the county in exchange for spending at least $5 billion by 2030 and creating at least 1,800 full-time jobs by 2035. Texas is also providing $30 million in incentives.
