{"id":380573,"date":"2026-10-11T06:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=380573"},"modified":"2026-10-11T06:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T13:32:07","slug":"elon-musk-now-says-he-doesnt-know-how-to-make-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/elon-musk-now-says-he-doesnt-know-how-to-make-chips\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk now says he doesn\u2019t know how to make chips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk has revised what he said about chipmaking. In a new post, he admits he has \u201ca tremendous amount to learn\u201d and says he doesn\u2019t know<\/strong> how to make chips. That\u2019s a meaningful change, because only a few weeks ago he told Chinese media that China could get around lithography and chipmaking limits in \u201ctwo or three years,\u201d even with export controls in place and no access to the best equipment.<\/p>\n

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He says Terafab, the Texas chip project, would begin with standard tools, then modify those machines to push more throughput, and later move on to building custom equipment<\/strong>. The plan also pulls mask-making, fabrication, packaging, and process work into one operation, rather than relying on the usual supplier setup where those pieces are spread across different companies. Some people have compared the Texas effort to a Tesla-SpaceX-Intel mashup. Reports put the starting cost at about $17 billion. And Musk\u2019s position seems to be that the team can still solve it, even if he\u2019s not a chip industry veteran.<\/p>\n\n

For people who follow semiconductors, the scale of the challenge is pretty clear. By most industry estimates, Taiwan produces more than 60%<\/strong> of the world\u2019s chips and more than 90% of the most advanced ones, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) still dominates the foundry business. The obstacles aren\u2019t just money. They\u2019re equipment, talent, process complexity, and, above all, getting high yields at volume. That\u2019s why some observers think mass production at strong yields could turn out to be tougher than some of Musk\u2019s aerospace targets. And all of this feeds back into the larger US-China argument over export controls<\/a>: do they actually slow China down, or do they just give China more reason to build faster toward self-sufficiency?<\/p>\n

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Elon Musk has revised what he said about chipmaking. In a new post, he admits he has \u201ca tremendous amount to learn\u201d and says he doesn\u2019t know how to make chips. That\u2019s a meaningful change, because only a few weeks ago he told Chinese media that China could get around lithography and chipmaking limits in … Continue reading “Elon Musk now says he doesn\u2019t know how to make chips”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9351,"featured_media":380572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-380573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380574,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380573\/revisions\/380574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380573"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=380573"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=380573"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=380573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}