SpaceX well into building out 1M sf Austin area solar cell factory

After weeks of speculation, Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s solar cell factory in Bastrop appears to be deep into construction.

The factory is being built due south from Musk’s Starlink construction facility on FM 1209 according to the Austin Business Journal. As the race to develop artificial intelligence data centers heats up in Texas, the solar cells are meant to power large scale data centers in orbit around the Earth. Bastrop County officials have stated that SpaceX filed permits for a 1.1 million square foot facility.

Over the course of five years, Musk has been building out tech infrastructure in Austin and the surrounding area for his various firms. Reporting from Bloomberg indicates that Musk plans to build a private recreation complex close to land owned by SpaceX. He’s also already completed the Tesla Gigafactory, located at 1 Tesla Road in Travis County, a stone’s throw away from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to the west and the Austin Executive Airport to the north.

Additionally, a Terafab semiconductor fabrication plant could be coming to Grimes County, just outside of Aggieland, according to the outlet. And xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence initiative, subleased 112,000 square feet of office space at Austin’s historic Seaholm Power Plant, which sits along the Colorado River in downtown.

Musk is far from the only tech executive eyeing Bastrop county for further land expansion. Earlier this month, entities connected to Amazon Data Services snagged 1,300 acres in the burgeoning area, presumably to build out more data centers.

While the Texas data center blitz shows no signs of slowing, it’s been far from smooth. Musk, specifically, has faced multiple fines from state regulators for mismanaging wastewater along the Colorado River, according to the publication.

Elsewhere, the Fort Worth City Council postponed a vote on tax incentives for a proposed $1.1 billion Edged U.S. data center campus following raised resident concerns over the lack of oversight for the project.

— Hunter Cooke