Intel wants to reveal more details about its recent deal with Elon Musk’s companies. According to a memo sent by CEO Lip-Bu Tan (seen by CRN), the US chipmaker plans to share with its staff the “scope and nature” of its involvement in the Terafab chip factory, which will also include several of Elon Musk’s companies, such as SpaceX, xAI and Tesla, in the “coming weeks.”This comes after Intel’s stock rose 51% over eight consecutive sessions earlier this week, adding over $100 billion to its market capitalisation within 10 days. Among several positive developments that drove the gains, the Musk-Terafab deal was one of the factors that pushed the company’s stock to its best weekly performance since January 2020.
Read what Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan said about Elon Musk’s Terafab chip making project
In the recent memo, Tan described the collaboration as a “strategic alliance” between Intel and companies led by Elon Musk. Referring to Musk, Tan wrote in the memo, “His expansive vision across AI, transportation, communications, robotics and space travel relies heavily on an ample and uninterrupted supply of silicon chips. Intel is thus a natural partner to help him realise his vision.”Last month, Musk introduced Terafab and outlined his plans to begin with two chip fabrication plants in Austin, Texas. One facility is expected to focus on chips for vehicles and humanoid robots, while the other would target chips for AI data centers in space.Musk said the initiative is driven by expectations that his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, will need significantly higher chip production capacity in the future than what is currently available.In his memo, Tan said Intel “will work closely with these companies to help bring up Terafab” and described the initiative as an effort to expand chip design, manufacturing, and packaging capabilities. He added that discussions with Musk and his teams were “wide-ranging and deep,” and that “both sides quickly realised that working together would be mutually beneficial to furthering our shared objectives.”He assigned oversight of the project to CTO and chief of staff Pushkar Ranade, noting, “I have asked Pushkar to assemble and engage select technologists across the company to contribute to this project.”The name Terafab refers to the goal of producing chips with a computing capacity equivalent to 1 terawatt annually, which Musk has said is about twice the current capacity in the US.During the announcement, Intel said it is “proud to join the Terafab project with SpaceX, xAI and Tesla to refactor silicon fab technology.”“Our ability to design, fabricate and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will accelerate Terafab’s aim to produce 1 [terawatt per year] of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics,” the company added.
