@MilkRoadAI: The most powerful AI company o...
@MilkRoadAI
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Mar 23, 2026
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The most powerful AI company on Earth just announced it is leaving Earth.
Elon Musk stood in a decommissioned power plant in Austin on Saturday night and told the world the plan.
The plan involves a chip factory, a moon base, and a magnetic cannon.
Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are building a single semiconductor facility called Terafab, targeting one terawatt of AI compute produced every year.
That is roughly double the entire current electricity capacity of the United States.
But here is where it gets strange.
Most of that compute is not going into your phone but going into a data center in Virginia.
Around 80% of Terafab's chip output is destined for space.
Musk said the cost of running AI in orbit will eventually drop below the cost of running it on the ground because space is always sunny, and solar panels work five times more efficiently up there.
Then he described what comes after the terawatt.
A petawatt, one thousand times more powerful.
To get there, Musk says you do not build a bigger factory on Earth but instead you build one on the moon.
And no rockets needed because moon has no atmosphere and one-sixth of Earth's gravity.
You build an electromagnetic mass driver, a magnetic cannon and you launch AI satellites directly into deep space from the lunar surface.
The cost of launching a pound of payload today on a Falcon rocket runs about $1,200 while a lunar mass driver could do it for dollars per pound in electricity.
This is the single biggest reduction in the cost of intelligence in human history, if it works.
The chips being built at Terafab come in two types.
One for Optimus robots and Tesla vehicles and other called D3, hardened specifically for space.
Musk expects the volume of Optimus robots to be 10 to 100 times greater than the volume of cars.
That means billions of AI chips every year.
The stated goal is not just a business but as Musk called it the start of a galactic civilization.
He said he wants to complete the lunar infrastructure within his own lifetime.
Whether you believe him or not, this is no longer science fiction being pitched on a stage.
Terafab broke ground, the chips are being designed.
The race to put AI in space has officially started and one man controls the rockets, the robots, the chips, and the satellites.
Elon Musk stood in a decommissioned power plant in Austin on Saturday night and told the world the plan.
The plan involves a chip factory, a moon base, and a magnetic cannon.
Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are building a single semiconductor facility called Terafab, targeting one terawatt of AI compute produced every year.
That is roughly double the entire current electricity capacity of the United States.
But here is where it gets strange.
Most of that compute is not going into your phone but going into a data center in Virginia.
Around 80% of Terafab's chip output is destined for space.
Musk said the cost of running AI in orbit will eventually drop below the cost of running it on the ground because space is always sunny, and solar panels work five times more efficiently up there.
Then he described what comes after the terawatt.
A petawatt, one thousand times more powerful.
To get there, Musk says you do not build a bigger factory on Earth but instead you build one on the moon.
And no rockets needed because moon has no atmosphere and one-sixth of Earth's gravity.
You build an electromagnetic mass driver, a magnetic cannon and you launch AI satellites directly into deep space from the lunar surface.
The cost of launching a pound of payload today on a Falcon rocket runs about $1,200 while a lunar mass driver could do it for dollars per pound in electricity.
This is the single biggest reduction in the cost of intelligence in human history, if it works.
The chips being built at Terafab come in two types.
One for Optimus robots and Tesla vehicles and other called D3, hardened specifically for space.
Musk expects the volume of Optimus robots to be 10 to 100 times greater than the volume of cars.
That means billions of AI chips every year.
The stated goal is not just a business but as Musk called it the start of a galactic civilization.
He said he wants to complete the lunar infrastructure within his own lifetime.
Whether you believe him or not, this is no longer science fiction being pitched on a stage.
Terafab broke ground, the chips are being designed.
The race to put AI in space has officially started and one man controls the rockets, the robots, the chips, and the satellites.
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