Tegtmeyer, who has spent years documenting Giga Texas and Starbase from the air, flew the site after receiving direct flight approval from Tesla. The footage shows tree removal and early earthmoving work spread across what Tegtmeyer describes as Phase 1 of a planned 10-phase build — echoing how ground clearing at Giga Texas quietly began before that project was ever formally confirmed.

The largest building in the world

Terafab is a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, planned roughly 130 miles east of Giga Texas near College Station. The initial phase carries a combined $16.8 billion price tag, with a fully built-out multi-phase facility projected to cost around $119 billion and cover more than 100 million square feet — about ten times the footprint of Giga Texas. When finished, it's expected to be the most advanced chip fabrication plant, and the largest building, on Earth.

Not to be confused with the ATCF

Tegtmeyer has been careful to distinguish Terafab from the smaller Advanced Technology Chip Fab (ATCF) already rising at Giga Texas itself — a separate Tesla-SpaceX development facility that forms the first stage of the companies' AI chip program. Terafab, by contrast, will be the full-scale production site, intended to reduce Tesla and SpaceX's reliance on third-party foundries for the silicon that powers Full Self-Driving, Cybercab, Optimus, and orbital compute hardware.

Tegtmeyer says this is only the beginning of regular coverage, with more aerial updates promised as clearing gives way to foundation work in the months ahead.