The world’s largest building may soon rise from an unlikely setting: a quiet, rural corner of southeast Texas.
Elon Musk’s proposed $16.8 billion “sci-fi city” in Texas could become the largest building on Earth. Planned for Grimes County, about 70 miles northwest of Houston, the colossal Terafab semiconductor facility is expected to span more than 100 million square feet and produce advanced chips for SpaceX and Tesla. If completed at that scale, it would be more than five times the size of China’s 18.9-million-square-foot New Century Global Center, currently recognised as the world’s largest building by floor area.
BEIJING, CHINA – MAY 14: Tesla CEO Elon Musk applauds during a state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People on May 14, 2026 in Beijing, China. Both President Trump and President Xi addressed ways to enhance bilateral economic cooperation and investment, and agreed that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. According to Chinese state media, Xi emphasized the importance of the Taiwan issue, and that a mishandling could sour U.S.-China relations. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)Alex Wong/Getty Images
Unveiled through a series of futuristic renderings, the project comprises vast rectilinear structures linked by elevated roadways, giving the proposed industrial campus the appearance of a city conceived for another planet. Musk has said Terafab will be “the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far” and “stunningly beautiful”. Its first phase represents an initial investment of more than $16.8 billion and is expected to create approximately 3,000 jobs.
Terafab will reportedly function as a joint supply chain for SpaceX and Tesla. The objective of the vertically integrated chip factory is to “combine logic, memory, and advanced packaging under one roof”, according to the company’s website. According to SpaceX, Terafab will also produce AI chips for millions of Tesla Optimus robots, self-driving vehicles, and space projects, including the company’s proposed space-based data centres. “Sci-fi city is what we’re aiming for,” Musk said in another post on X.
The scale of the project dramatically exceeds Musk’s previous manufacturing ventures. Terafab would be approximately 10 times the size of Tesla’s existing 10-million-square-foot Gigafactory Texas. The renderings released by SpaceX show an immense group of elongated buildings connected by futuristic transport routes and surrounded by the rural Texas landscape.
