Staff working for Elon Musk have contacted major chip equipment suppliers — including Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, and Lam Research — seeking price quotes and delivery timelines for a wide range of semiconductor manufacturing tools as part of the Terafab project, Bloomberg News reported. The initiative, a joint venture with SpaceX and Tesla, aims to begin silicon production by 2029 and is set to be built on the Tesla campus in eastern Travis County, Austin, Texas. Launched in March, Terafab is central to Musk's robotics and data centre ambitions, and Intel recently announced it would join the project to manufacture processors; Musk has reportedly instructed his team to move at "light speed" while providing suppliers with minimal product details.