Musk's $119 Billion Chip Plant: ASML CEO Says He's 'Very Serious

Elon Musk is in direct talks with ASML to build TeraFab, a Texas chip plant with a potential price tag of $119 billion. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet confirmed he's spoken directly with Musk and called him "very serious" about the project and his broader semiconductor and satellite ambitions. This episode breaks down what TeraFab actually is and why it depends on one Dutch company. A Texas filing puts the initial investment at $55 billion, with total costs reaching up to $119 billion, one of the most expensive semiconductor projects ever proposed on US soil. Musk announced it in March with an initial $20 billion stake, aiming to produce logic chips, memory, and advanced packaging under one roof. Intel joined in April and plans to contribute its 14A process node, targeting 2-nanometer production. The catch: there's no path to 2nm chips that doesn't run through ASML. Every major chipmaker (Nvidia, TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Intel) relies on ASML's lithography systems. We cover the supply crunch Fouquet is warning about ("demand on AI is coming so strongly that we will be in a supply-limited market for quite a while"), the next-gen High-NA EUV tools with first logic chips expected within months and Intel as the earliest adopter, ASML's projection that the chip market could hit $1.5 trillion by 2030, and Fouquet's warning that Europe risks falling behind on AI because of regulatory complexity. SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla all stand to draw from the same constrained chip supply, which is the thread tying this to Musk's whole empire.TeraFab, Elon Musk, ASML, semiconductor manufacturing, High-NA EUV, Intel 14A, 2nm chips, AI compute, chip shortage, Christophe Fouquet.